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f~^ ?\ V

he |ji0rg of the Ajaitons

THE

STORY OF IRELAND

THE HON. EMILY LAWLESS

AUTHOR OF " HURRISH : A STUDY," ETC
WITH SOME ADDITIONS BY

MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON

NEW

MICROFILMED BY
UNIVERSITY OF TORON'

LIBRARY
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LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN

1888

COPYRIGHT

BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1887

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

BY T. FISHER UNWIN

Press of

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK

THE EARL OF DUFFERIN, K.P., G.C.B., F.R.S., &c.,
VICEROY OF INDIA.

SGEUL NA H-EIREANN

DON ElREANNACH AS FIU.

PREFACE.

IRISH history is a long, dark road, with many blind
alleys, many sudden turnings, many unaccountably
crooked portions ; a road which, if it has a few sign-
posts to guide us, bristles with threatening notices,
now upon the one side and now upon the other, the
very ground underfoot being often full of unsuspected
perils threatening to hurt the unwary.

To the genuine explorer, flushed with justified self-
confidence, well equipped for the journey, and in-
different to scratches or bruises, one may suppose
this to be rather an allurement than otherwise, as
he spurs along, lance at rest, and sword on side. To
the less well-equipped traveller, who has no pretensions
to the name of explorer at all, no particular courage
to boast of, and whose only ambition is to make the
way a little plainer for some one travelling along it for
the first time, it is decidedly a serious impediment, so
much so as almost to scare such a one from attempting
the role of guide even in the slightest and least
responsible capacity.

X PREFACE.

Another and perhaps even more formidable ob-
jection occurs. A history beset with such distracting
problems, bristling with such thorny controversies, a
history, above all, which has so much bearing upon
that portion of history which has still to be born,
ought, it may be said, to be approached in the gravest
and most authoritative fashion possible, or else not
approached at all. This is too true, and that so
slight a summary as this can put forward no claim
to authority of any sort is evident enough. National
"stones," however, no less than histories, gain a
gravity, it must be remembered, and even at times a
solemnity from their subject apart altogether from
their treatment. A good reader will read a great
deal more into them than the mere bald words con-
vey. The lights and shadows of a great or a tragic
past play over their easy surface, giving it a depth
and solidity to which it could otherwise lay no claim.
If the present attempt disposes any one to study
at first hand one of the strangest and most perplexing
chapters of human history and national destiny, its
author for one will be more than content.

CONTENTS.

PRIMEVAL IRELAND

PAGE

1-12

Early migrations, I — The great ice age, 3 — Northern character
of the fauna and flora of Ireland, 5 — First inhabitants, 6 —
Formorian, Firbolgs, Tuatha-da-Danaans, 6 — Battle of Moy-
tura Cong, 7~9 — The Scoto-Celtic invasion, 9 — Annals and
annalists, how far credible? 9-12.

II.

THE LEGENDS AND LEGEND-MAKERS

13-21

.The legends, 13 — Their archaic character, 14 — The pursuit of
Gilla Backer and his horse, 14-18 — The ollamhs, 19 — Positions
of the bards or ollamhs in Primitive Ireland, 19-21.

III.

PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND

22-31

Early Celtic law, 24 — The Senchus Mor and Book of Aicill,
25 — Laws of inheritance, 26-28 — Narrow conception of
patriotism, 30-31.

Xli CONTENTS.

PAGE
IV.

ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY .... 32-37

St. Patrick's birth, 33 — Capture, slavery, and escape, 33 — His
return to Ireland, 33 — Arrives at Tara, 34 — Visits Connaught
and Ulster, 34, 35 — Early Irish missionaries and their enthu-
siasm for the work, 35-37.

V.
THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES . . . 38-41

" The Tribes of the Saints," 38— Small oratories in the West,
39, 40 — Plan of monastic life, 40 — Ready acceptance of
Christianity, 41.

VI.

COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH . . 42-49

Birth of Columba, 42 — His journey to lona, 42 — His
character and humanity, 43 — Conversion of Saxon England,
44 — Schism between Western Church and Papacy, 45 — Synod
of Whitby, 46 — The Irish Church at home, 47-49.

VII.
THE NORTHERN SCOURGE 5°~59

Ireland divided into five kingdoms, 50 — The Ard-Reagh, 52 —
Arrival of Vikings, 53 — Thorgist or Turgesius? 55 — Later
Viking invaders, 56 — The round towers, 56-58 — Dublin
founded, 58 — Hatred between the two races, 59.

VIII.
BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE 60-70

Two deliverers, 60 — Defeat of the Vikings at Sulcost, 61 —
Brian becomes king of Munster, 63 — Seizes Cashel, 63 — Over-
comes Malachy, 63 — Becomes king of Ireland, 64 — Celtic
theory of loyalty, 64 — Fresh Viking invasion, 66 — Battle of
Clontarf, 67-69 — Death of Brian Boru, 69.

CONTENTS. Xlll

PAGE

IX.

FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW .... 71-75

Result of Brian Boru's death, 71 — Chaos returns, 71 — Struggle
for the succession, 73 — Roderick O'Connor, last native king
of Ireland, 75.

X.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION .... 76-89

First group of knightly invaders, 76 — Their relationship, 76 —
Giraldus Cambrensis, 78 — Motives for invasion, 79 — Papal
sanction, 81 — Dermot McMurrough, 81 — He enlists recruits,
82 — Arrival of Robert FitzStephen, 83 — Wexford, Ossory,
and Kilkenny captured, 84-86 — Arrival of Strongbow, 86 —
Struggle with Hasculph the Dane and John the Mad, 87 —
Danes defeated, 87 — Dublin besieged, 88 — Strongbow defeats
Roderick O'Connor, goes to Wexford, and embarks at Water-
ford, 88— Meets the king, 88 — Arrival of Henry II., 89.

XL

HENRY II. IN IRELAND ..... 90-92

Large military forces of Henry, 90 — The chiefs submit and do
homage, 90, 91 — Irish theory of Ard-Reagh or Over-Lord, 91
— Henry in Dublin, 92 — Synod at Cashel, 92 — Henry recalled
to England, 92.

XII.

EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION . 93~97

Effect of Henry's stay in Ireland, 93 — His large schemes, 94 —
Their practical failure, 95 — Rapacity of adventurers, 96 — Con-
trast between Irish and their conquerors, 96 — Civil war from
the outset, 96-97.

XIII.
JOHN IN IRELAND 98-100

John's first visit, 98 — His insolence and misconduct, 98 — Re-
called in disgrace, 98— Second visit as king, 99 — His energy,
99 — Overruns Meath and Ulster, 99 — Returns to England,
99 — Effect of his visit, 100.

XIV CONTENTS.

PAGE

XIV.

THE LORDS PALATINE 101-106

The Geraldines, 101 — Their possessions in Ireland, 102 — The
five palatinates, 103 — The heirs of Strongbow, 103 — The
De Burghs, 104 — The Butlers, 105 — Importance of the great
territorial owners in Ireland, 105, 106.

XV.
EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND .... 107-112

Want of landmarks in Irish history, 107 — Edward the I.'s
reign, 107 — Battle of Bannockburn, 108 — Its effect on Ireland,
108 — Scotch invasion under Edward Bruce, 108 — Ravages
and famine caused by him, 109 — The colonists regain courage :
Battle of Dundalk, no — Edward Bruce killed, no — Result
of the Scotch invasion, in, 112.

XVI.
THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY .... 113-118

Reign of Edward III., 113 — A lost opportunity, 114 — Duke
of Clarence sent to Ireland, 114 — Parliament at Kilkenny,
115 — Statute of Kilkenny, 115 — Its objects, 116 — Two Ire-
lands, 116 — Weakness resorts to cruelty, 117 — Effects of the
statute, 1 1 8.

XVII.
RICHARD II. IN IRELAND 119-124

Richard the II.'s two visits to Ireland, 119 — Utter dis-
organization of the country, 119-120 — The chieftains submit
and come in, 120 — "Sir Art" McMurrough, 120 — Richard
leaves, and Art McMurrough breaks out again, 121 — Earl of
March killed, 121 — Richard returns, 122 — Attacks Art
McMurrough, 122 — Failure of attack, 122 — Recalled to Eng-
land, 123 — His defeat and death, 123 — Confusion redoubles,
124.

CONTENTS. XV

PAGE

XVIII.
THE DEEPEST DEPTHS '. 125-131

Monotony of Irish history, 125 — State of Ireland during the
Wars of the Roses, 126 — Pillage, carnage, and rapine, 126,
127— The seaport towns, 128 — Richard Duke of York in
Ireland, 128— His conciliatory policy, 129 — Battle of To wton,
129 — The Kildares grow in power, 130 — Geroit Mor, 130 —
His character, 131.

XIX.

THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT . . 132-143

Effect of the battle of Bosworth, 132 — Kildare still in power,
132 — Lambert Simnel in Ireland, 132 — Crowned in Dublin,
134— Battle of Stoke, 135 — Henry VII. pardons the rebels,
135 — Irish peers summoned to Court, 136— Perkin VVarbeck
in Ireland, 137 — Quarrels between the Kildares and Ormonds,
138 — Sir Edward Poynings, 138 — Kildare's trial and acquital,
140 — Restored to power, 141 — Battle of Knocktow, 142, 143.

XX.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE . . . 144-150

Rise of Wolsey to power, 144 — Resolves to destroy the
Geraldines, 144 — Geroit Mor succeeded by his son, 145 — Earl
of Surrey sent as viceroy, 145 — Kildare restored to power, 146
— Summoned to London and imprisoned, 146 — Again restored
and again imprisoned, 147 — Situation changed, 147 — Revolt
of Silken Thomas, 147 — Seizes Dublin, 148 — Archbishop
Allen murdered, 148 — Sir William Skeffington to Ireland, 148
— Kildare dies in prison, 149—" The Pardon of Maynooth,"
149 — Silken Thomas surrenders, and is executed, 1 50.

XXI.

THE ACT OF SUPREMACY . . . . . 151-155

Lord Leonard Grey deputy, 151 — Accused of treason, re-
called and executed, 152 — Act of Supremacy proposed, 152 —
Opposition of clergy, 152 — Suppression of the abbeys, 153 —

XV111 CONTENTS.

PAGE

XXIX.
THE ESSEX FAILURE 206-210

Essex appointed Lord-Lieutenant, 206 — Arrival in Ireland,
208 — Mistakes and disasters, 208 — Death of Sir Conyers Clif-
ford in the Curlews, 209 — Essex advances north, 209 — Holds
a conference with Tyrone, 209 — Agrees to an armistice, 209 —
Anger of the Queen, 210 — Essex suddenly leaves Ireland, 210.

XXX.
END OF THE TYRONE WAR .... 211-219

Mountjoy appointed deputy, 211 — Contrast between him and
Essex, 213 — Reasons for Mountjoy's greater success, 213 —
Conquest by starvation, 214 — Success of method, 214 —
Arrival of Spanish forces at Kinsale : Mountjoy and Carew
marched south and invests Kinsale, 215 — Attack of Mountjoy
by Tyrone, 218 — Failure of attack, 218 — Surrender of
Spaniards, 218 — Surrender of Tyrone, 219.

XXXI.
THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS .... 220-225

The last chieftain rising against England, 220 — Condition of
affairs at close of war, 221 — Tyrone's position impossible,
221 — Reported plot, 222 — Tyrone and Tyrconnel take flight,
222 — Confiscation of their territory, 223 — Sir John Davis, 224
— The Ulster Settlement, 224, 225.

XXXII.

THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION . . . 226-228

Parliament summoned, 226 — Anxiety of government to secure
a Protestant majority, 226 — Contested election, 227 — Narrow
Protestant majority, 227 — Furious quarrel over election of
Speaker, 228 — Parliament dissolved, 228 — The king appealed
to, 228 — Attainder of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, 228 — Reversal of
statute of Kilkenny, 228.

CONTENTS. XIX

PAGE

XXXIII.
OLD AND NEW OWNERS 229-231

Further plantations, 229 — The Connaught landowners, 230 —
Their positions, 231— Charles I.'s accession and how it
affected Ireland, 231 — Lord Falkland appointed viceroy, 231
— Succeeded by Wentworth, 231.

XXXIV.
STRAFFORD .... ... 232-239

Arrival of Wentworth in Ireland, 232 — His methods and
theory, 232— -Dissolves parliament, 234 — Goes to Connaught,
234 — Galway jury fined and imprisoned, 230 — His eccle-
siastical policy, 237 — His Irish army, 238 — Return to England,
238 — Attainder, trial, and death, 239.

XXXV.
TORTY-ONE 240-245

Confusion and disorder, 240 — Stafford's army disbanded, but
still in the country, 241 — Plot to seize Dublin Castle, 241 —
Plot transpires, 242 — Sir Phelim O'Neill seizes Charlemont,
243 — Attack upon the Protestant settlers, 243 — Barbarities
and counter barbarities, 244.

XXXVI.

THE WATERS SPREAD 246-250

The rising at first local, 246 — Attitude of the Pale gentry, 249
— They resolve to join the rising, 247 — Disorganization of
the northern insurgents, 248 — Incapacity of Sir Phelim O'Neill,
248 — Arrival of Owen Roe O'Neill and Preston, 249 — Meeting
of delegates at Kilkenny, 249 — Charles decides upon a coup
de main, 250.

XXXVII.

CIVIL WAR 251-256

Effect of the Ulster massacres on England, 251 — An agrarian
rather than religious rising, 252 — The Confederates' terms,

XX CONTENTS.

PAGE

253 — Glamorgan sent to Ireland, 254 — The secret treaty
transpires, 254 — Arrival of Rinucini, 255 — Battle of Benturb,
255 — Ormond surrenders Dublin to the Parliament, 256.

XXXVIII.
THE CONFUSION DEEPENS. .... 257-260

Total confusion of aims and parties, 258 — The "poor
Panther" Inchiquin, 258 — Alliance between Jones and Owen
Roe O'Neill, 259 — Ormond advances upon Dublin, 259 —
Battle of Baggotrath and defeat of the Royalists, 260 —
Arrival of Cromwell, 260.

XXXIX.
CROMWELL IN IRELAND 261-265

Cromwell's mission, 261 — Assault of Drogheda, and slaughter
of its garrison, 261 — Wexford garrison slaughtered, 262 —
Cromwell's discipline, 263 — The " country sickness," 263 —
Confusion in the Royalist camp, 264 — Signature of the Scotch
covenant by the king, 284 — Final surrender of O'Neill and the
Irish army, 265.

XL.

CROMWELL'S METHODS 266-272

Loss of life during the eight years of war, 266 — Punishment
of the vanquished, 267 — Executions, 267 — Wholesale scheme
of eviction, 268 — The New Owners, 269 — " The Burren," 270
— Sale of women to the West Indian plantations, 270 — Dis-
satisfaction amongst the soldiers and debenture holders, 271 —
Irish Cromwellians, 272.

XLI.
THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT 273-276

The Restoration, 273 — Henry Cromwell, 273 — Coote and
Broghill, 273— Court of claims established in Dublin, 275 —
Prolonged dispute, 276 — Final settlement, 276 — Condition of
Irish Roman Catholics at close of the struggle, 276.

CONTENTS. XXI

PAGE
XLII.

OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION . . 277-283

Effects of the Restoration upon the Ulster Presbyterians, 277 —
A new Act of Uniformity, 277 — Exodus of Presbyterians from
Ireland, 278 — The Popish plot, 279 — Insane panic, 279 —
Execution of Archbishop Plunkett, 279 — Sudden reversal of
the tide, 280— Tyrconnel sent as viceroy, 280 — Terror of
Protestant settlers, 281 — William of Orange in England, 282
— James II. arrives in Ireland, 283.

XLIII.
WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND . . . 284-294

• Popular enthusiasm for James, 284 — Struggle between his
English and Irish adherents, 285 — James advances to London-
derry, 285 — Siege of Londonderry, 286 — Its garrison relieved,
286 — Debasing the coinage, 286 — Reversal of the Act of
Settlement, 287 — Bill of Attainder, 287 — Arrival of William
III., 288— Battle of the Boyne, 289— Flight of James, 289 —
First siege of Limerick, 291 — Athlone captured by Ginkel,
292 — Battle of Aughrim, 293, 294.

XLIV.

THE TREATY OF LIMERICK .... 295-298

Sarsfield refuses to surrender, 295 — Second siege of Limerick,
295— The Limerick treaty, 296 — Its exact purport, 296 — The
military treaty, 297 — Departure of the exiles, 298.

XLV.
THE PENAL CODE ...... 299-306

A new century and new fortunes, 299 — Mr. Lecky's " Eigh-
teenth Century," 300 — Reversal of all the recent Acts, 300 —
The Penal Code, 301 — Burke's description of it, 302 — How
evaded, 303 — Its effects upon Protestants and Catholics,
304-306.

XLVI.

THE COMMERCIAL CODE .... 307-310

The " Protestant Ascendency," 307— England's jealousy of

XX11 CONTENTS.

PAGE

her Colonists, 308 — Act passed prohibiting export of Irish
woollen goods, 309 — Effects of the Act upon Ireland, 309 —
Smuggling on an immense scale, 309 — Collapse of industry,
310 — Strained relations, 310.

XLVII.
MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT .... 311-319

The "Ingenious Molyneux," 311 — Irish naturalists, 312 —
Molyneux's " Case of Ireland," 313 — Effect of its publication,
315 — Death of Molyneux, 315 — Dean Swift, 315 — His posi-
tion in Irish politics, 315 — The " Drapier Letters," 317 —
Their line of attack, 318 — Effect on popular opinion, 318 —
Wood's halfpence suspended, 318.

XLVIII.
HENRY FLOOD 320-327

Forty dull years, 320 — Parliamentary abuses, 322 — Charles
Lucas, 322 — Flood enters Parliament, 323 — -His struggle with
the Government, 325 — Lord Townsend recalled, 325 — Flood
accepts office, 326 — Effect of that acceptance, 326 — Rejoins
the Liberal side, 326 — Tries to outbid Grattan, 326 — Failure
and end, 327.

XLIX.
HENRY GRATTAN 328-333

Unanimity of opinion about Grattan, 328 — His character, 328
— Enters Parliament, 330— The "Declaration of Rights,"
330 — Carried by the Irish Parliament, 330 — Declaratory Act
of George I. repealed, 331 — A spell of prosperity, 331— Rocks
ahead, 332 — Disaster following disaster, 332 — Grattan and the
Union, 332 — Grattan's death, 333.

THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS , 334-340

Revolt of the American Colonies, 334 — Its effect on Ireland,
334 — Disastrous condition of the country, 335 — Volunteer
movement begun in Belfast, 336 — Rapid popularity, 336 — Its
effect upon politics, 338 — Free Trade, 338 — Declaratory Act
repealed, 338 — The Volunteers disband, 340.

CONTENTS. xxili

PAGB

LI.
DANGER SIGNALS 341-346

Reform the crying necessity of the hour, 341 — Corruption
steadily increasing, 341 — Attempt to obtain free importation
of goods to England, 342 — Its failure, 342 — Disturbed state of
the country, 344 — Its causes, 344 — "White boys," "Oak
boys," and "Steel boys," 344, 345 — Faction war in the North,
345 — Orange lodges, 345 — " Society of United Irishmen," 346
— The one hope for the future, 346.

LI I.
THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT . . 347~353

General desire for Catholic Emancipation, 347 — Lord Shef-
field's evidence, 347 — The Catholic delegates received by the
king, 349 — Lord Fitzwilliam sent as Lord-Lieutenant, 350 —
Popular enthusiasm, 350 — Recalled, 351 — Result of his recall,
352, 353-

LIII.
'NINETY-EIGHT 354-366

Wolfe Tone, his character and autobiography, 354 — The other
leaders of the rebellion, 354 — England and France at war,
355 — Hoche's descent, 355 — Panic, 357 — Habeas Corpus Act
suspended, 357 — Misconduct of soldiers, 359 — Arrest of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, 361 — Outbreak of the rebellion, 361 —
The rising in Wexford, 362 — Bagenal Harvey, 363— Arklow,
New Ross, and Vinegar Hill, 363 — Suppression of the rebel-
lion, 364 — Final incidents, 365 — Death of Wolfe Tone, 366.

LIV.
THE UNION 367-376

State of Ireland after the rebellion, 367, 368— Pitt resolved
to pass the Union, 370 — Inducements offered, 370 — Dis-
crepancy of statements upon the subject, 371 — Bribery or
not bribery ? 372 — Lord Cornwallis and Lord Castlereagh, 373
— The Union carried, 375-

XXIV CONTENTS.

PAGE

LV.

O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION . 37 7-389

The Union not followed by union, 277 — The Emmett out-
break, 377— Young Daniel O'Connell, 379— The new Catholic
Association, 380 — The Clare election, 381 — Catholic Relief
Bill carried, 381 — The "Incarnation of a people," 383 —
Repeal, 384 — The O'Connell gatherings, 386 — The meeting
proclaimed at Clontarf, 387 — Prosecution and condemnation
of O'Connell, 387 — Released on appeal, 387 — Never regained
his power, 388 — Despondency and death, 388, 389.

LVI.

" YOUNG IRELAND" 390-395

"The Nation," 390 — Sir C. Gavan Duffy, 390 — Thomas
Davis, 390 — Smith O'Brien, 391 — Effect of O'Connell's death
on the "Young Ireland" party, 392 — James Lalor, 393 — His
influence on Mitchell, 393 — The " United Irishmen " news-
paper started, 394 — Arrest and transportation of Mitchell, 394
— The end of the " Young Ireland " movement, 395.

LVII.
THE FAMINE 396-402

First symptoms of the potato disease, 396 — The fatal night,
396 — Beginning of Famine, 397 — Rapid mortality, 397 — Mr.
Forster's reports, 398— Relief works, 399 — Soup kitchens, 399
— Failure of preventive measures, 399 — Famine followed by
ruin, 400 — Clearances and Emigration, 401 — Emigrant ships,
401 — Permanent effects of the Famine on Ireland, 402.

LVIII.
THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT .... 403-416

Encumbered Estates Act, 403 — Tenant League of North and
South, 403 — The "Brass Band," 404 — A lull, 404 — The
Phcenix organization, 404 — The Fenian "scare," 405 — -Rescue
of Fenian prisoners at Manchester, 405 — The Clerkenwel]
explosion, 406 — The Irish Church Act, 406, 407 — The Irish

CONTENTS. XXV

PAGE

Land Act of 1870, 407 — Failure of Irish Education Act, and
retirement of the Liberals, 408 — Mr. Butt and Mr. Parnell,
408 — The Land League established, 409 — Return of the
Liberals to power, 409 — The Irish Land Act of 1881, 410 —
Arrest and release of Land League Leaders, 411 — Murders in
the Phoenix Park, 411 — James Carey, 412 — His death, 412 —
The agrarian struggle, 413 — Home Rule, 414 — Its eventual
destiny, 414 — The untravelled Future, 416.

LIX.
CONCLUSION 417-419

Irish heroes, 417 — Causes of their want of popularity, 418 —
Irish versus Scotch heroes, 418—" Prince Posterity," 419.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[Nearly all the archaeological illustrations in this volume are from
" The Early Christian Architecture of Ireland," by Miss M. Stokes,
who has kindly allowed them to be reproduced. The portraits are
chiefly from engravings, &c., kept in the Prints Room of the British
Museum.]

PAGE
HOLY ISLAND, LOUGH DERG .... Frontispiece

MAP OF IRELAND IN REIGN OF HENRY VII. . . . 134

CROSS IN CEMETERY OF TEMPUL BRECCAN ... 39

WEST CROSS, MONASTERBOICE 48

DOORWAY OF MAGHERA CHURCH 51

KILBANNON TOWER 54

KELLS ROUND TOWER 57

BASE OF TUAM CROSS 62

DOORWAY OF KILLESHIN CHURCH 65

INTERIOR OF CORMAC'S CHAPEL (CASHEL) ... 72

WEST FRONT OF ST. CRONAN'S CHURCH .... 77

WEST DOORWAY OF FRESHFORD CHURCH 80

SIR HENRY SIDNEY (PORTRAIT OF) 175

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

ASKEATON CASTLE 182

CATHERINE, THE " OLD " COUNTESS OF DESMOND . 1 86
SIR JOHN PERROT (PORTRAIT OF) . . . . .196

CAHIR CASTLE (IN 1599) 208

CAPTURE OF THE EARL OF ORMOND BY THE O'MORES . 212

IRELAND IN THE REIGN OF JAMES 1 21?

THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD, 164! . 233

ARCHBISHOP USSHER (PORTRAIT OF) .... 236

JAMES, DUKE OF ORMOND (PORTRAIT OF) . . . 259

HENRY CROMWELL (PORTRAIT OF) 274

"TIGER" ROCHE 305

DEAN SWIFT (PORTRAIT OF) 316

PHILIP, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD (PORTRAIT OF) . . 322

RIGHT HON. HENRY FLOOD (PORTRAIT OF) . . . 324

RIGHT HON. HENRY GRATTAN, M.P. (PORTRAIT OF) . 329

JAMES CAULFIELD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT (PORTRAIT OF) 337

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE (PORTRAIT OF) . . 343

THE EARL OF MO1RA ("A MAN OF IMPORTANCE") . 348

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE (SKETCH FROM LIFE) . 353

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE (PORTRAIT OF) . ' . . . 356

LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD (PORTRAIT OF) . . . 360

THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN 369

MARQUIS CORNWALLIS (PORTRAIT OF) .... 374

ROBERT EMMETT (PORTRAIT OF) 378

DANIEL O'CONNELL, M.P. (SKETCH OF) . . . . 383

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxix

LESSER ILLUSTRATIONS (AT END OF CHAPTERS).

PAGE

CROMLECH ON HOWTH 12

MOUTH OF SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER AT DOWTH . . 31

ST. KEVIN'S CHURCH 41

CORMAC'S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER . . . 70

ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH . . . • . . -75
SOUTH WINDOW OF ST. CAEMIN's CHURCH ... 89

FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT 97

TRIM CASTLE 112

FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT . . . . 131 AND 150
INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLs) . . l6o

ST. PATRICK'S BELL ......... 173

INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLs) . . 2O2

CINERARY URN • . 2IO

TARA BROOCH 219

DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH .... 225

SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL 239

ST. COLUMBA'S ORATORY 265

INITIAL LETTER (FROM THE BOOK OF KELLs) . . 294
CRYPT OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL . . -376

THE STORY OF IRELAND.

i.

PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

"IT seems to be certain," says the Abbe McGeo-
ghehan, "that Ireland continued uninhabited from
the Creation to the Deluge." With this assurance to
help us on our onward way I may venture to supple-
ment it by saying that little is known about the
first, or even about the second, third, and fourth suc-
cession of settlers in Ireland. At what precise period
what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great
Aryan stock broke away from its parent tree, by what
route its migrants travelled, in what degree of con-
sanguinity it stood to the equally Celtic race or races
of Britain, what sort of people inhabited Ireland
previous to the first Aryan invasion — all this is in the
last degree uncertain, though that it was inhabited by
some race or races outside the limits of that greatest
of human groups seems from ethnological evidence
to be perfectly clear.

When first it dawns upon us through that thick

2 PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

darkness which hangs about the birth of all countries
— whatever their destiny — it was a densely wooded
and scantily peopled island "lying a-loose," as old
Campion, the Elizabethan historian, tells us, " upon
the West Ocean," though his further assertion that
" in shape it resembleth an egg, plain on the sides,
and not reaching forth to the sea in nooks and
elbows of Land as Brittaine doeth " — cannot be said
to be quite geographically accurate — the last part of
the description referring evidently to the east coast,
the only one with which, like most of his country-
men, he was at that time familiar.

Geographically, then, and topographically it was
no doubt in much the same state as the greater part
of it remained up to the middle or end of the six-
teenth century, a wild, tangled, roadless land, that is
to say, shaggy with forests, abounding in streams,
abounding, too, in lakes — far more, doubtless, than
at present, drainage and other causes having greatly
reduced their number — with rivers bearing the never-
failing tribute of the skies to the sea, yet not so
thoroughly as to hinder enormous districts from re-
maining in a swamped and saturated condition, given
up to the bogs, which even at the present time are
said to cover nearly one-sixth of its surface.

This superfluity of bogs seems always in earlier
times to have been expeditiously set down by all
historians and agriculturists as part of the general
depravity of the Irish native, who had allowed his
good lands, — doubtless for his own mischievous plea-
sure— to run to waste ; bogs being then supposed to
differ from other lands only so far as they were made

GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 3

"waste and barren by superfluous moisture." About
the middle of last century it began to be perceived
that this view of the matter was somewhat inade-
quate ; the theory then prevailing being that bogs
owed their origin not to water alone, but to the
destruction of woods, whose remains are found im-
bedded in them — a view which held good for another
fifty or sixty years, until it was in its turn effectually
disposed of by the report of the Bogs Commission in
1810, when it was proved once for all that it was to
the growth of sphagnums and other peat-producing
mosses they were. in the main due — a view which has
never since been called in question.

A great deal, however, had happened to Ireland
before the bogs began to grow on it at all. It had — to
speak only of some of its later vicissitudes — been twice
at least united to England, and through it with what
we now know as the continent of Europe, and twice
severed from it again. It had been exposed to a cold
so intense as to bleach off all life from its surface,
utterly depriving it of vegetation, and grinding the
mountains down to that scraped bun -like outline
which so many of them still retain ; had covered the
whole country, highlands and lowlands alike, with a
dense overtoppling cap of snow, towering often thou-
sands of feet above the present height of the moun-
tains, from which "central silence" the glaciers crept
sleepily down the ravines and valleys, eating their
way steadily seaward, and leaving behind them
moraines to mark their passage, leaving also longi-
tudinal scratches, cut, as a diamond cuts glass, upon
the rocks, as may be seen by any one who takes

4 PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

the trouble of looking for them ; finally reaching
the sea in a vast sloping plateau which pushed its
course steadily onward until its further advance was
overborne by the buoyancy of the salt water, the
ends breaking off, as the Greenland glaciers do to-
day, into huge floating icebergs, which butted against
one another, jammed up all the smaller bays and
fiords ; were carried in again and again on the
rising tide ; rolled hither and thither like so many
colossal ninepins ; played, in short, all the old rough-
and-tumble Arctic games through many a cold and
dismal century, finally melting away as the milder
weather began slowly to return, leaving Ireland a
very lamentable-looking island indeed, not unlike
one of those deplorable islands scattered along the
shores of Greenland and upon the edges of Baffin's
Bay — treeless, grassless, brown and scalded, wearing
everywhere over its surface the marks of that great
ice-plough which had lacerated its sides so long.

There seems to be good geological evidence that
the land connection between Ireland and Scotland
continued to a considerably later period than between
it and England, to which, and as far as can be seen
to no other possible cause is to be attributed two
very striking characteristics of its fauna, namely, its
excessive meagreness and its strikingly northern
character. Not only does it come far short of the
already meagre English fauna, but all the distinctively
southern species are the ones missing, though there
is nothing in the climate to account for the fact.
The Irish hare, for instance, is not the ordinary brown
hare of England, but the " blue " or Arctic hare of

FAUNA AND FLORA. 5

Scotch mountains, the same which still further to the
north becomes white in winter, a habit which, owing
to the milder Irish winters, it has apparently shaken
off.

It would be pleasant to linger here a little over
this point of distribution — so fruitful of suggestion as
to the early history of the planet we occupy. To
speculate as to the curious contradictions, or apparent
contradictions, to be found even within so narrow an
area as that of Ireland. What, for instance, has
brought a group of South European plants to the
shores of Kerry and Connemara, which plants are not
to be found in England, even in Cornwall, which one
would have thought must surely have arrested them
first ? Why, when neither the common toad or frog
are indigenous in Ireland (for the latter, though
common enough now, was only introduced at the
beginning of last century) a comparatively rare little
toad, the Natterjack, should be found in one corner
of Kerry to all appearances indigenously? All these
questions, however, belong to quite another sort of
book, and to a much larger survey of the field than
there is time here to embark upon, so there is nothing
for it but to turn one's back resolutely upon the
tempting sin of discursiveness, or we shall find our-
selves belated before our real journey is even
begun.

The first people, then, of whose existence in Ireland
we can be said to know anything are commonly
asserted to have been of Turanian origin, and are
known as "Formorians." As far as we can gather,
they were a dark, low-browed, stunted race, although,

6 PRIMEVAL IRELAND. ,

oddly enough, the word Formorian in early Irish
legend is always used as synonymous with the word
giant. They were, at any rate, a race of utterly
savage hunters and fishermen, ignorant of metal, of
pottery, possibly even of the use of fire ; using the
stone hammers or hatchets of which vast numbers
remain in Ireland to this day, and specimens of which
may be seen in every museum. How long they held
possession no one can tell, although Irish philologists
believe several local Irish names to date from this
almost inconceivably remote epoch. Perhaps if we
think of the Lapps of the present day, and picture
them wandering about the country, catching the hares
and rabbits in nooses, burrowing in the earth or
amongst rocks, and being, not impossibly, looked
down on with scorn by the great Irish elk which still
stalked majestically over the hills ; rearing ugly little
altars to dim, formless gods ; trembling at every
sudden gust, and seeing demon faces in every bush
and brake, it will give us a fairly good notion of
what these very earliest inhabitants of Ireland were
probably like.

Next followed a Belgic colony, known as the
Firbolgs, who overran the country, and appear to
have been of a somewhat higher ethnological grade,
although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy.
Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated
to make way for the Firbolgs, any more than the
Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans, Milesians,
and other successive races ; such wholesale exter-
minations being, in fact, very rare, especially in a
country which like Ireland seems specially laid out

THE FIRBOLGS. 7

by kindly nature for the protection of a weaker race
struggling in the grip of a stronger one.

After the Firbolgs, though I should be sorry to
be obliged to say how long after, fresh and more
important tribes of invaders began to appear. The
first of these were the Tuatha-da-Danaans, who
arrived under the leadership of their king Nuad, and
took possession of the east of the country. These
Tuatha-da-Danaans are believed to have been large,
blue-eyed people of Scandinavian origin, kinsmen and
possibly ancestors of those Norsemen or " Danes " who
in years to come were destined to work such woe and
havoc upon the island.

Many battles took place between these Danaans
and the earlier Firbolgic settlers —the native owners as
no doubt they felt themselves of the country. One of
the best substantiated of these, not, indeed, by history
or even tradition, but by a more solid testimony, that
of the stone remains left on the spot, prove, at any
rate, that some long- sustained battle was at some
remote period fought on the spot.

This is the famous pre-historic battle of Moytura,
rather the Southern Moytura, for there were two ;
the other, situated not far from the present town of
Sligo, retaining " the largest collection of pre-historic
remains," says Dr. Petrie, " in any region in the world
with the exception of Carnac." This second battle
of Moytura was fought upon the plain of Cong, which
is washed by the waters of Lough Mask and Lough
Corrib, close to where the long monotonous midland
plain of Ireland becomes broken, changes into that
region of high mountains and low-lying valleys, now

8 PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

called Connemara, but which in earlier days was
always known as lar Connaught.

It is a wild scene even now, not very much less
so than it must have been when this old and half-
mythical Battle of the West was fought and won. A
grey plain, " stone-roughened like the graveyard of
dead hosts," broken into grassy ridges, and starred at
intervals with pools, repeating the larger glitter of
the lake hard by. Over the whole surface of this
tumbled plain rise, at intervals, great masses of rock,
some natural, but others artificially up-tilted — crom-
lechs and dolmens, menhirs and cairns — whitened by
lichen scrawls, giving them often in uncertain light
the effect of so many undecipherable inscriptions,
written in a long-forgotten tongue.

From the position of the battle-field it has been
made out to their own satisfaction by those who have
studied it on the spot, that the Firbolgs must have
taken up a fortified position upon the hill called Ben-
levi ; a good strategic position unquestionably, having
behind it the whole of the Mayo mountains into which
to retreat in case of defeat. The Danaans, on the other
hand, advancing from the plains of Meath, took up their
station upon the hill known as Knockmaa,1 standing by
itself about five miles from the present town of Tuam,
on the top of which stands a great cairn, believed to
have been in existence even then — a legacy of some
yet earlier and more primitive race which inhabited
the country, and, therefore, possibly the oldest record
of humanity to-day extant in Ireland.

Three days the battle is said to have raged with

1 Now Castle Racket Hill.

BATTLE OF MOYTURA. g

varying fortunes, in the course of which the Danaan
king Nuad lost his arm, a loss which was repaired, we
are told, by the famous artificer Credue or Cerd, who
made him a silver one, and as " Nuad of the Silver
Hand " he figures conspicuously in early Irish history.
In spite of this, and of the death of a number of their
fighting-men, the stars fought for the Tuatha-da-
Danaans, who were strong men and cunning, workers
in metal, and great fighters, so that at last they
utterly made an end of their antagonists, occupying
the whole country, and holding it, say the annalists
for a hundred and ninety and six years — building
earth and stone forts, many of which exist to this
day, but what their end was no man can tell you,
save tliat they, too, were, in their turn, conquered by
the Milesians or "Scoti,"who next overran the country,
giving to it their own name of Scotia, by which name
it was known down to the end of the twelfth century,
and driving the earlier settlers before them, who there-
upon fled to the hills, and took refuge in the forests,
whence they emerged, doubtless, with unpleasant
effect upon their conquerors, as another defeated race
did upon their conquerors in later days.

As regards the early doings of these Scoti, although
nearer to us in point of time, their history is, if any-
thing, rather more vague than that of their prede-
cessors. The source for the greater part of it is in a
work known as the " Annals of the Four Masters," a
compilation put together in the sixteenth century, from
documents now no longer existing, and which must
unfortunately, be regarded as largely fictitious. Were
names, indeed, all that were wanting to give substan-

IO PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

tiality there are enough and to spare, the beginning
of every Irish history positively bristling with them.
Leland, for instance, who published his three sturdy
tomes in the year 1773, and who is still one of our
chief authorities on the subject, speaks of Ireland as
having " engendered one hundred and seventy one
monarchs, all of the same house and lineage ; with
sixty-eight kings, and two queens of Great Brittain
and Ireland all sprung equally from her loins." We
read in his pages of the famous brethren Heber and
Heremon, sons of Milesius, who divided the island
between them ; of Allamh Fodla, celebrated as a
healer of feuds and protector of learning, who drew
the priests and bards together into a triennial
assembly at Tara, in Meath ; of Kimbaoth, who is
praised by the annalists for having advanced learning
and kept the peace. The times of peace had not ab-
solutely arrived however, for he was not long after
murdered, and wild confusion and wholesale slaughter
ensued. Another Milesian prince, Thuathal, shortly
afterwards returned from .North Britain, and, assisted
by a body of Pictish soldiers, defeated the rebels,
restored order, and re-established the seat of his
monarchy in Meath.

As a specimen of the sort of stories current in
history of this kind, Leland relates at considerable
length the account of the insult offered to this'Thuathal
by the provincial king of Leinster. " The king," he
tells us, " had married the daughter of Thuathal. but
conceiving a violent passion for her sister, pretended
that his wife had died, and demanded and obtained
her sister in marriage. The two ladies met in the

MYTHS. II

royal house of Leinster. Astonishment and sorrow
put an end to their lives ! " The offender not long
afterwards was invaded by his justly indignant
father-in-law, and his province only preserved from
desolation on condition of paying a heavy tribute,
" as a perpetual memorial of the resentment of
Thuathal and of the offence committed by the king
of Leinster."

Another special favourite of the annalists is Cormac
O'Conn, whose reign they place about the year 250,
and over whose doings they wax eloquent, dwell-
ing upon the splendour of his court, the heroism of
his warlike sons, the beauty of his ten fair daughters,
the doings of his famous militia, the Fenni or Fenians,
and especially of his illustrious general Finn, or Fingal,
the hero of the legends, and father of the poet Ossian
— a warrior whom we shall meet with again in the
next chapter.

And now, it will perhaps be asked, what is one in
sober seriousness to say to all this ? All that one can
say is that these tales are not to be taken as history
in any rigid sense of the word, but must for the most
part be regarded as mere hints, caught from chaos,
and coming down through a hundred broken mediums ;
scraps of adventures told around camp fires ; oral
traditions ; rude songs handed from father to son, and
altering more or less with each new teller. The early
history of Ireland is in this respect much like the early
history of all other countries. We have the same
semi-mythical aggregations, grown up around some
small kernel of reality, but so changed, swollen,
distorted, that it is difficult to distinguish the true

12

PRIMEVAL IRELAND.

from the false ; becoming vaguer and vaguer too
as the mists of time and sentiment gather more and
more thickly around them, until at last we seem to be
swimming dimly in a " moony vapour," which allows no
dull peaks of reality to pierce through it at all. "There
were giants in those days," is a continually recurring
assertion, characteristic of all ancient annals, and of
these with the rest.

CROMLECH ON HOWTH.

II.

THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.

BETTER far than such historic shams — cardboard
castles with little or no substance behind them — are the
real legends. These put forward no obtrusive preten-
sions to accuracy, and for that very reason are far
truer in that larger sense in which all the genuine
and spontaneous outgrowth of a country form part
and parcel of its history. Some of the best of these
have been excellently translated by Mr. Joyce, whose
"Celtic Romances" ought to be in the hands of every
one, from the boy of twelve upwards, who aspires to
know anything of the inner history of Ireland ; to
understand, that is to say, that curiously recurrent note
of poetry and pathos which breaks continually through
all the dull hard prose of the surface. A note often
lost in unmitigated din and discord, yet none the less
re-emerging, age after age, and century after century,
and always when it does so lending its own charm
to a record, .which, without some such alleviations,
would be almost too grim and disheartening in its
unrelieved and unresulting misery to be voluntarily
approached at all.

Although as they now stand none appear to be of

14- THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.

earlier date than the ninth or tenth century, these
stories all breathe the very breath of a primitive
world. An air of remote pagan antiquity hangs over
them, and as we read we seem gradually to realize
an Ireland as unlike the one we know now as if,
like the magic island of Buz, it had sunk under the
waves and been lost. Take, for instance — for space
will not allow of more than a sample — the story of "The
Pursuit of Gilla Backer and his Horse," not by any
means one of the best, yet characteristic enough.
In it we learn that from Beltane, the ist of May — the
great Celtic festival of the sun — to Sanim, the ist of
November, the chiefs and Fenni hunted each day with
their hounds through the forests and over the plains,
while from Sanim to Beltane they lived in the
" Betas," or houses of hospitality, or feasted high
with Finn McCumal, son of Cumal, grandson of
Trenmore O'Baskin, whose palace stood upon the
summit of the hill of Allen, a hill now crowned with
a meaningless modern obelisk, covering the site of
the old historic rath, a familiar object to thousands
who have looked up at it from the Curragh of Kildare,
certainly with no thought in their minds of Finn
McCumal or his vanished warriors.

The tale tells how one day, after hunting on the
Plains of Cliach, the Fenni sat down to rest upon the
hill of Colkilla, their hunting tents being pitched upon
a level spot near the summit. How presently, afar off
over the plain at their feet, they saw one of the con-
quered race of earlier inhabitants, a " Formorian " of
huge size and repulsive ugliness coming towards them,
leading his horse by the halter, an animal larger, it

THE STORY OF THE GILLA DACKER. 1$

seems, than six ordinary horses, but broken down and
knock-kneed, with jaws that stuck out far in advance
of its head. How the heroes, idling pleasantly about in
the sunshine, laughed aloud at the uncouth "foreigner "
and his ugly raw-boned beast, " covered with tangled
scraggy hair of a sooty black." How he came before
the king and, having made obeisance, told him that
his name was the Gilla Backer, and then and there
took service with him for a year, desiring at the same
time that special care should be paid to his horse,
and the best food given it, and care taken that it
did not stray, whereat the heroes laughed again, the
horse standing like a thing carved in wood and unable
apparently to move a leg.

No sooner, however, was it loosed, and the halter
cast off, than it rushed amongst the other horses,
kicking and lashing, and seizing them with its
teeth till not one escaped. Seeing which, the Fenni
rose up in high wrath, and one of them seized the
Gilla Backer's horse by the halter and tried to
draw it away, but again it became like a rock, and
refused to stir. Then he mounted its back and
flogged it, but still it remained like a stone. Then,
one after the other, thirteen more of the heroes
mounted, but still it stirred not. The very instant,
however, that its master, the Gilla Dacker rose up
angrily to depart, the old horse went too, with the
fourteen heroes still upon his back, whereat the Fenni
raised fresh shouts of laughter. But the Gilla Dacker,
after he had walked a little way, looked back, and
seeing that his horse was following, stood for a moment
to tuck up his skirts. " Then, all at once changing his

1 6 THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.

pace, he set out with long strides ; and if you know
what the speed of a swallow is, flying across a
mountain-side, or the fairy wind of a March day
sweeping over the plains, then you can understand
Gilla Backer, as he ran down the hillside towards
the south-west. Neither was the horse behindhand
in the race, for, though he carried a heavy load, he
galloped like the wind after his master, plunging and
bounding forward with as much freedom as if he had
nothing at all on his back."

Finn and his warriors left behind on the hill stared
awhile, and then resolved to go to Ben Edar, now
Howth, there to seek for a ship to follow after
Gilla Backer and his horse, and the fourteen
heroes. And on their way they met two bright-faced
youths wearing mantles of scarlet silk, fastened by
brooches of gold, who, saluting the king, told him
their names were Foltlebar and Feradach, and that
they were the sons of the king of Innia, and each
possessed an art, and that as they walked they had
disputed whose art was the greater. " And my art,"
said Feradach, " is this. If at any time a company
of warriors need a ship, give me only my joiner's axe
and my crann-tavall,1 and I am able to provide a ship
without delay. The only thing I ask them to do is {his
— to cover their heads close and keep them covered,
while I give the crann-tavall three blows of my axe.
Then I tell them to uncover their heads, and lo, there
lies the ship in harbour, ready to sail ! "

The Foltlebar spoke and said, " This, O king, is the
art I profess : On land I can track the wild duck over

* A sling for projecting stones, stning rather like a cross-bow.

THE STORY OF THE GILL A DACKER. ±7

nine ridges and nine glens, and follow her without
being once thrown out, till I drop upon her in her nest.
And I can follow up a track on sea quite as well as on
land, if I have a good ship and crew."

And Finn replied, " You are the very men I want ;
and now I take you both into my service. Though our
own trackmen, the Clan Nairn, are good, yet we now
need some one still more skilful to follow the Gilla
Backer through unknown seas."

To these unknown seas they went, starting from
Ben Edar, and sailed away west for many days over
the Atlantic, seeing many strange sights and passing
many unknown islands. But at last the ship stopped
short in front of an island with vast rocky cliffs
towering high above their heads as steep as a sheet of
glass, at which the heroes gazed amazed and baffled,
not knowing what to do next. But Dermot O'Dynor
—called also Dermot of the Bright-face — undertook to
climb it, for of all the Fenni he was the most learned
in Druidical enchantments, having been early taught
the secret of fairy lore by Mananan Mac Lir, who ruled
over the Inis Manan or Land of Promise.

Dermot accordingly took leave of his friends and
climbed the great cliff, and when he reached the top
he found that it was flat and covered with tall green
grass, as is often the case in these desolate wind-
blown Atlantic islets. And in the very centre he
found a well with a tall pillar stone beside it, and
beside the pillar stone a drinking-horn chased with
gold. And he took up the drinking-horn to drink,
being thirsty, but the instant he touched the brim
with his lips, lo ! a great Wizard Champion armed

1 8 THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.

to the teeth, sprang up out of the earth, whereupon he
and Dermot O'Dynor fought together beside the well
the livelong day until the dusk fell. But the moment
the dusk fell, the wizard champion sprang with a great
bound into the middle of the well, and so disappeared,
leaving Dermot standing there much astonished at
what had befallen him.

And the next day the same thing happened, and
the next, and the next. But on the fourth day,
Dermot watched his foe narrowly, and when the dusk
came on, and he saw that he was about to spring
into the well, he flung his arms tightly about him,
and the wizard champion struggled to get free, but
Dermot held him, and at length they both fell
together into the well, deeper and deeper to the
very bottom of the earth, and there was nothing
to be seen but dim shadows, and nothing to be
heard but vague confused sounds like the roaring
of waves. At length there came a glimmering of
light, and all at once bright day broke suddenly
around them, and they came out at the other side
of the earth, and found themselves in Tir- fa-ton, the
land under the sea, where the flowers bloom all the
year round, and no man has ever so much as heard the
word Death.

What happened there ; how Dermot O'Dynor met
the other heroes, and how the fourteen Fenni who
had been carried off were at last recaptured, would
be too long to tell. Unlike most of these legends all
comes right in the end ; Gilla Dacker and his ugly
horse disappear suddenly into space, and neither Finn
himself nor any of his warriors ever see them again.

THE BARDS. 19

Jt is impossible, I think, to read this, and to an even
greater degree some of the other stories, which have
been translated by Mr. Joyce and others, without per-
ceiving how thoroughly impregnated with old-world
and mythological sentiment they are. An air of all
but fabulous antiquity pervades them, greater perhaps
than pervades the legends of any other north Euro-
pean people. We seem transplanted to a world of
the most primitive type conceivable ; a world of myth
and of fable, of direct Nature interpretations, of
mythology, in short, pure and simple. Even those
stories which are known to be of later origin exhibit
to a greater or less degree the same character ; one
which has come down to them doubtless from earlier
half-forgotten tales, of which they are merely the final
and most modern outcome.

When, too, we turn from the legends themselves to
the legend-makers, everything that we know of the
position of the bards (Ollamhs or Sennachies] carries
out the same idea. In the earliest times they were
not merely the singers and story-tellers of their race,
but to a great degree they bore a religious or semi-
religious character. Like the Brehons or judges they
were the directors and guides of the others, but they
possessed in addition a peculiarly Druidical character
of sanctity, as the inheritors and interpreters of a
revelation confided to them alone. A power the
more formidable because no one, probably, had ever
ventured to define its exact character.

The Head bard or Ollamh, in the estimation of his
tribesmen, stood next in importance to the chieftain or
king — higher, indeed, in some respects ; for whereas

20 THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.

to slay a king might, or might not be criminal, to slay
an Ollamh entailed both outlawing in this life and a
vaguer, but not the less terrible, supernatural penalty in
another. Occasionally, as in the case of the Ollamh
Fodhla, by whom the halls of Tara are reputed to have
been built, the king was himself the bard, and so
combined both offices, but this appears to have been
rare. Even as late as the sixteenth century, refusal
of praise from a bard was held to confer a far deeper
and more abiding stigma upon a man than blame from
any other lips. If they, " the bards," says an Eliza-
bethan writer, " say ought in dispraise, the gentleman,
especially the meere Irish, stand in great awe."

It is easy, I think, to see this is merely the sur-
vival of some far more potent power wielded in earlier
times. In pre-Christian days especially, the penalty
attaching to the curse of a Bard was understood to
carry with it a sort of natural anathema, not unlike
the priestly anathema of later times. Indeed there
was one singular, and, as far as I am aware, unique
power possessed by the Irish Bards, which goes beyond
any priestly or papal anathema, and which was
known as the Claim Dickin, a truly awful malediction,
by means of which the Ollamh, if offended or injured,
could pronounce a spell against the very land of his
injurer ; which spell once pronounced that land
would produce no crop of any kind, neither could
living creature graze upon it, neither was it possible
even to walk over it without peril, and so it continued
until the wrong, whatever it was, had been repented,
and the curse of the Ollamh was lifted off from the
land again.

THE CLANN DICHIN. 21

Is it to be wondered at that men, endowed with
such powers of blessing or banning, possessed of such
mystic communion with the then utterly unknown
powers of nature, should have exercised an all but
unlimited influence over the minds of their countrymen,
especially at a time when the powers of evil were
still supposed to stalk the earth in all their native
malignity, and no light of any revelation had broken
through the thick dim roof overhead ?

Few races of which the world has ever heard are
as imaginative as that of the Celt, and at this time the
imagination of every Celt must have been largely
exercised in the direction of the malevolent and the
terrible. Even now, after fourteen hundred years of
Christianity, the Connaught or Kerry peasant still
hears the shriek of his early gods in the sob of
the waves or the howling of the autumn storms. Fish
demons gleam out of the sides of the mountains, and
the black bog-holes are the haunts of slimy monsters
of inconceivable horror. Even the less directly
baneful spirits such as Finvarragh, king of the fairies,
who haunts the stony slopes of Knockmaa, and all the
endless variety of dii minores, the cluricans, banshees,
fetches who peopled the primitive forests, and still
hop and mow about their ruined homes, were far
more likely to injure than to benefit unless approached
in exactly the right manner, and with the properly
uttered conjurations. The Unknown is always the
Terrible; and the more vivid an untaught imagination
is, the more certain it is to conjure up exactly the
things which alarm it most, and which it least likes
to have to believe in.

PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.

GETTING out of this earliest and foggiest period,
whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber
the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of
which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a long
and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain
as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and
coming to hard fact, we must picture Ireland still
covered for the most part with pathless forests, but
here and there cleared and settled after a rude fashion
by rough cattle-owning tribes, who herded their own
cattle and "lifted" their neighbour's quite in the
approved fashion of the Scotch Highlanders up to a
century and a half ago.

Upon the whole, we may fairly conclude that matters
were ameliorating more or less ; that the wolves were
being killed, the wroods cleared — not as yet in the
ferocious wholesale fashion of later days — that a little
rudimentary agriculture showed perhaps here and there
in sheltered places. Sheep and goats grazed then as
now over the hills, and herds of cattle began to cover
the Lowlands. The men, too, were possibly beginning
to grow a trifle less like two-legged beasts of prey,

SLAVERY. 23

though still rough as the very wolves they hunted ;
bare-legged, wild-eyed hunter-herdsmen with — who
can doubt it ? — flocks of children trooping vociferously
at their heels.

Of the daily life, habits, dress, religion of these
people — the direct ancestors of four-fifths of the pre-
sent inhabitants of Ireland — we know unfortunately
exceedingly little. It is not even certain, whether
human sacrifices did or did not form — as they certainly
did in Celtic Britain — part of that religion, though
there is some evidence that it did, in which case
prisoners taken in battle, or slaves, were probably the
victims.

That a considerable amount of slavery existed
in early Celtic Ireland is certain, though as to the
rules by which it was regulated, as of almost every
other detail of the life, we know little or nothing.
At the time of the Anglo-Norman conquest Ireland
was said to be full of English slaves carried off in
raids along the coast, and these filibustering expedi-
tions undoubtedly began in very early times. St.
Patrick himself was thus carried off, and the annalists
tell us that in the third century Cormac Mac Art
ravaged the whole western coast of Britain, and
brought away "great stores of slaves and treasures."
To how late a period, too, the earlier conquered races
of Ireland, such as the Formorians, continued as a
distinct race from their Milesian conquerors, and
whether they existed as a slave class, or, as seems
more probable, as mere outcasts and vagabonds out of
the pale of humanity, liable like the " Tory " of many
centuries later, to be killed whenever caught ; all these

24 PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.

are matters on which we have unfortunately only the
vaguest hints to guide us.

The whole texture of society must have been loose
and irregular to a degree that it is difficult for us now
to conceive, without central organization or social
cement of any kind. In one respect — that of the
treatment of his women — the Irish Celt seems to have
always stood in favourable contrast to most of the
other rude races which then covered the north of
Europe, but as regards the rest there was probably
little difference. Fighting was the one aim of life.
Not to have washed his spear in an adversary's gore,
was a reproach which would have been felt by a full-
grown tribesman to have carried with it the deepest
and most lasting ignominy. The very women were
not in early times exempt from war service, nay,
probably would have scorned to be so. They fought
beside their husbands, and slew or got slain with as
reckless a courage as the men, and it was not until the
time of St. Columba, late in the sixth century, that a
law was passed ordering them to remain in their
homes — a fact which alone speaks volumes both for
the vigour and the undying pugnacity of the race.

While, on the one hand, we can hardly thus
exaggerate the rudeness of this life, we must be
careful, on the other, of concluding that these people
were simple barbarians, incapable of discriminating
right from wrong. Men, even the wildest, rarely
indeed live entirely without some law to guide them,
and certainly it was so in Ireland. A rule was growing
up and becoming theoretically at any rate, established,
many of the provisions of which startle us by the

ANCIENT IRISH LAW. 25

curious modernness of their tone, so oddly do they
contrast with what we know of the condition of civi-
lization or non-civilization then existing.

Although this ancient Irish law was not drawn up
until long after the introduction of Christianity, it
seems best to speak of it here, as, though modified by
the stricter Christian rule, it in the main depended
for such authority as it possessed upon traditions
existing long before ; traditions regarded indeed by
Celtic scholars as tracing their origin beyond the
arrival of the first Celt in Ireland, outcomes and sur-
vivals, that is to say, of yet earlier Aryan rule, showing
points of resemblance with the equally Aryan laws of
India, a matter of great interest, carrying our thoughts
back along the history of humanity to a time when
those differences which seem now the most inherent
and vital were as yet undreamt of, and not one of the
great nations of the modern world were as much as
born.

The two chief books in which this law is contained,
the "Book of Aicill" and the " Senchus-Mor," have
only comparatively recently been translated and made
available for English readers. The law as there laid
down was drawn up and administered by the Brehons,
who were the judges and the law-makers of the
people, and whose decision was appealed to in all
matters of dispute. The most serious flaw of the
system — a very serious one it will be seen — was
that, owing to the scattered and tribal existence
prevailing, there was no strong central rule beJiind the
Brehon, as there is behind the modern judge, ready
and able to enforce his decrees. At bottom, force,

26 PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.

it must not be forgotten, is the sanction of all law,
and there was no available force of any kind then, nor
for many a long day afterwards, in Ireland.

It was, no doubt, owing chiefly to this defective
weakness that a system of fines rather than punish-
ments grew up, one which in later times caused much
scandal to English legal writers. In such a society
crime in fact was hardly recognizable except in the form
of an injury inflicted upon some person or persons. An
offence against the State there could not be, simply be-
cause there was no State to be offended. Everything,
from murder down to the smallest and most acciden-
tal injury, was compensated for by " erics " or fines.
The amount of these fines was decided upon by the
Brehon, who kept an extraordinary number of ima-
ginary rulings, descending into the most minute par-
ticulars, such as what fine was to be paid in the case
of one person's cat stealing milk from another person's
house, what fine in the case of one woman's bees
stinging another woman, a careful distinction being
preserved in this case between the case in which the
sting did or did not draw blood ! Even in the matter
of fines it does not seem clear how the penalty was
to be enforced where the person on whom it was
inflicted refused to submit and where there was no
one at hand to coerce him successfully.

As regards ownership of land early Irish law is
very peculiar, and requires to be carefully studied.
Primogeniture, regarded by all English lawyers trained
under the feudal system as the very basis of inheri-
tance, was simply unknown. Even in the case of the
chieftain his rights belonged only to himself, and

ANCIENT IRISH LAW. 2J

before his death a re-election took place, when some
other of the same blood, not necessarily his eldest
son, or even his son at all, but a brother, first cousin,
uncle, or whoever stood highest in the estimation of
the clan, was nominated as " Tanist " or successor,
and received promises of support from the rest.

Elizabethan writers mention a stone which was
placed upon a hill or mound having the shape of a
foot cut on it, supposed to be that of the first chief
or ancestor of the race, " upon which stone the Tanist
placing his foot, took oath to maintain all ancient
customs inviolably, and to give up the succession
peaceably to his Tanist in due time."

The object of securing a Tanist during the lifetime
of the chief was to hinder its falling to a minor, or
some one unfit to take up the chieftainship, and this
continued to prevail for centuries after the Anglo-
Norman invasion, and was eve* adopted by many
owners of English descent who had become " meere
Irish," as the phrase ran, or "degenerate English."

" The childe being oftentimes left in nonage," says
Campion, " could never defend his patrimony, but by
the time he grow to a competent age and have buried
an uncle or two, he also taketh his turn," a custom
which, as he adds, " breedeth among them continual
warres."

The entire land belonged to the clan, and was
held theoretically in common, and a redistribution
made on the death of each owner, though it seems
doubtful whether so very inconvenient an arrange-
ment could practically have been adhered to. All
sons, illegitimate as well as legitimate, shared and

28 PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.

shared alike, holding the property between them in
undivided ownership. It was less the actual land
than the amount of grazing it afforded which con-
stituted its value. Even to this day a man, especially
in the West of Ireland, will tell you that he has "the
grass of three cows," or " the grass of six cows," as
the case may be.

It is curious that the most distinct ancient rules
concerning the excessive extortion of rent are, as
has been shown by Sir Henry Maine, to be found
in the " Senchus Mor." Under its regulations three
rents are enumerated — namely, the rack rent to be
extorted from one of a strange tribe ; the fair rent
from one of the same tribe ; and the stipulated rent
to be paid equally to either. The Irish clan or sept
was a very loose, and in many cases irregular,
structure, embracing even those who were practically
undistinguishable from slaves, yet from none of these
could any but a fair or customary rent be demanded.
It was only when those who by no fiction could be
supposed to belong to the clan sought for land that
the best price attainable might be extorted and
insisted upon.

In so primitive a state of society such persons were
almost sure to be outcasts, thrown upon the world
either by the breaking up of other clans or by their
own misdoings. A man of this class was generally
what was known as a " Fuidhar " or " broken man,"
and answered in some respects to the slave or the
serf of the early English village community. Like
him he seems to have been his lord's or chiefs chattel,
and if killed or injured the fine or "eric" was paid

THE FAMILY. 29

not to his own family, but to his master. Such men
were usually settled by the chief upon the unap-
propriated tribal lands over which his own authority
tended to increase. This Fuidhar class from the
first seem to have been very numerous, and de-
pending as they did absolutely upon the chief, there
grew up by degrees that class of armed retainers —
kerns and galloglasses, they were called in later
times — who surrounded every important chief, whether
of English or Irish descent, and were by them quar-
tered forcibly in war time upon others, and so there
grew up that system of " coyne and livery," or forced
entertainment for horse and men, which is to be met
with again and again throughout Irish history, and
which undoubtedly was one of the greatest curses of
the country, tending more perhaps than any other
single cause to keep its people at the lowest possible
condition of starvation and misery.

No system of representation seems ever to have
prevailed in Ireland. That idea is, in fact, almost
purely Teutonic, and seems never to have sprung up
spontaneously amongst any Celtic people. The family
v/as the real root. Every head of a family ruled his
own household, and submitted in his turn to the rule
of his chief. Blood-relationship, including fosterage,
was the only real and binding union ; that larger con-
nection known as the clan or sept, having the smaller
one of the family for its basis, as was the case also
amongst the clans of the Scotch highlands. Theo-
retically, all members of a clan, high and low alike,
were held to be the descendants of a common ancestor,
and in this way to have a real and direct claim upon

30 PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.

one another. If a man was not in some degree akin
to another he was no better than a beast, and might
be killed like one without compunction whenever
occasion arose.

Everything thus began and centred around the
tribe or sept. The whole theory of life was purely
local. The bare right of existence extended only a
few miles from your own door, to the men who bore
the same name as yourself. Beyond that nothing
was sacred ; neither age nor sex, neither life nor
goods, not even in later times the churches themselves.
Like his cousin of the Scotch Highlands, the Irish
tribesman's life was one perpetual carnival of fighting,
burning, raiding, plundering, and he who plundered
oftenest was the finest hero.

All this must be steadily borne in mind as it
enables us to understand, as nothing else will, that
almost insane joy in and lust for fighting, that marked
inability to settle down to orderly life which runs
through all Irish history from the beginning almost
to the very end.

Patriotism, too, it must be remembered, is in the
first instance only an idea, and the narrowest of local
jealousies may be, and often are, forms merely of the
same impulse. To men living in one of these small
isolated communities, each under the rule of its own
petty chieftain, it was natural and perhaps inevitable
that the sense of connection with those outside their
own community should have been remarkably slight,
and of nationality, as we understand the word, quite
non-existent. Their own little circle of hills and
valleys, their own forests and pasturage was their

TRIBAL LIFE. 31

world, the only one practically of which they had any
cognizance. To its scattered inhabitants of that
day little Ireland must have seemed a region of
incalculable extent, filled with enemies to kill or
to be killed by ; a region in which a man might
wander from sunrise to sunset yet never reach the
end, nay, for days together without coming to a
second sea. As Greece to a Greek of one of its
smaller states it seemed vast simply because he had
never in his own person explored its limits.

MOUTH OK SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER AT DOWTH, NEW GRANGE.

IV.

ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY.

BUT a new element was about to appear upon the
troubled stage, and a new figure, one whose doings,
however liberally we may discount the more purely
supernatural part of them, strikes us even now as
little short of miraculous. There are plenty of
heathen countries still ; plenty of missionaries too ;
but a missionary at whose word an entire island — a
heathen country given up, it must be remembered, to
exceedingly heathen practices — resigns its own creed,
and that missionary, too, no king, no warrior, but a
mere unarmed stranger, without power to enforce one
of the decrees he proclaimed so authoritatively, is a
phenomenon which we should find some little difficulty
now, or, indeed, at any time, in paralleling.

In one respect St. Patrick was less fortunate than
his equally illustrious successor, Columba, since he
found no contemporary, or nearly contemporary
chronicler, to write his story ; the consequence being
that it has become so overgrown with pious myths,
so tangled and matted with portents and miracles,
that it is often difficult for us to see any real substance
or outline below them at all.

HIS EARLY LIFE. 33

What little direct knowledge we have is derived
from a famous Irish manuscript known as "The Book
of Armagh," which contains, amongst other things, a
Confession and an Epistle, believed by some authori-
ties to have been actually written by St. Patrick him-
self, which was copied as it now stands by a monkish
scribe early in the eighth century. It also contains
a life of the saint from which the accounts of his later
historians have been chiefly drawn.

According to the account now generally accepted
he was born about the year 390, though as this would
make him well over a hundred at the time of his
death, perhaps 400 would be the safest date ; was a
native, not as formerly believed of Gaul, but of Dum-
barton upon the Clyde, whence he got carried off to
Ireland in a filibustering raid, became the slave of one
Milcho, an inferior chieftain, and herded his master's
sheep upon the Slemish mountains in Antrim.

Seven or eight years later he escaped, got back to
Britain, was ordained, afterwards went to Gaul,
and, according to one account, to Italy. But the
thought of the country of his captivity seems to have
remained upon his mind and to have haunted his
sleeping and waking thoughts. The unborn children
of the pagan island seemed to stretch our their hands
for help to him. At last the inward impulse grew too
strong to be resisted, and accompanied by a few fol-
lowers, he set foot first on the coast of Wicklow where
another missionary, Paladius, had before attempted
vainly to land, and being badly received there, took
boat again, and landed finally at the entrance of
Strangford Lough.

34 ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY.

From this point he made iiis way on foot to Meath,
where the king Laoghaire was holding a pagan festival,
and stopped to keep Easter on the hill of Slane where
he lit a fire. This fire being seen from the hill of Tara
aroused great anger, as no lights were by law allowed
to be shown before the king's beacon was lit. Laoghaire
accordingly sent to know the meaning of this in-
solence and to have St. Patrick brought before him.
St. Patrick's chronicler, Maccumacthenius (one could
wish that he had been contented with a shorter
name !), tells that as the saint drew nigh to Tara, many
prodigies took place. The earth shook, darkness fell,
and certain of the magicians who opposed him were
seized and tossed into the air. One prodigy certainly
took place, for he seems to have won converts from
the first. A large number appear to have been
gained upon the spot, and before long the greater
part of Meath had accepted the new creed, although
its king, Laoghaire himself remained a sturdy pagan
until his death.

From Tara St. Patrick went to Con naught, a
province to which he seems to have been drawn
from the first, and there spent eight years, founding
many churches and monasteries. There also he as-
cended Croagh Patrick, the tall sugar-loaf mountain
which stands over the waters of Clew Bay, and up
to the summit of which hundreds of pilgrims still
annually climb in his honour.

From Connaught he next turned his steps to Ulster,
visited Antrim and Armagh, and laid the foundations
of the future cathedral and bishopric in the latter
place. Wherever he went converts seem to have come

THE NEW REVOLUTION. 35

in to him in crowds. Even the Bards, who had most
to lose by the innovation, appear to have been in
many cases drawn over. They and the chiefs
gained, the rest followed unhesitatingly ; whole clans
were baptized at a time. Never was spiritual conquest
so astonishingly complete !

The tale of St. Patrick's doings ; of his many
triumphs ; his few failures ; of the boy Benignus
his first Irish disciple ; of his wrestling upon Mount
Cruachan ; of King Eochaidh ; of the Bard Ossian,
and his dialogues with the apostle, all this has been
excellently rendered into verse by Mr. Aubrey de Vere,
whose " Legends of St. Patrick " seem to the present
writer by no means so well known as they ought to
be. The second poem in the series, " The Disbelief
of Milcho," especially is one of great beauty, full of
wild poetic gleams, and touches which breathe the
very breath of an Irish landscape. Poetry is indeed
the medium best suited for the Patrician history.
The whole tale of the saint's achievements in Ireland
is one of those in which history seems to lose its
own sober colouring, to become luminous and half
magical, to take on all the rosy hues of a myth.

The best proof of the effect of the new reve-
lation is to be found in that extraordinary burst of
enthusiasm which marked the next few centuries.
The passion for conversion, for missionary labour of
all sorts, seems to have swept like a torrent over
the island, arousing to its best and highest point
that Celtic enthusiasm and which has never, unhap-
pily, found such noble exercise since. Irish mis-
sionaries flung themselves upon the dogged might

36 ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY.

of heathenism, and grappled with it in a death
struggle. Amongst the Picts of the Highlands, amongst
the fierce Friscians of the Northern seas, beside the
Lake of Constance, where the church of St. Gall
still preserves, the name of another Irish saint, in the
Black Forest, at Schaffhausen, at Wurtzburg, through-
out, in fact, all Germany and North Italy, they were
ubiquitous. Wherever they went their own red-hot
fervour seems to have melted every obstacle ; wher-
ever they went victory seems to have crowned their
zeal.1

Discounting as much as you choose everything that
seems to partake of pious exaggeration, there can
be no doubt that the period which followed the
Christianizing of Ireland was one of those shining
epochs of spiritual and also to a great degree intellec-
tual enthusiasm rare indeed in the history of the
world. Men's hearts, hill of newly - won fervour,
burned to hand on the torch in their turn to others.
They went out by thousands, and they beckoned in
their converts by tens of thousands. Irish hospitality
— a quality which has happily escaped the tooth
of criticism — broke out then with a vengeance,
and extended its hands to half a continent. From
Gaul, from Britain, from Germany, from dozens of
scattered places throughout the wide dominions of
Charlemagne, the students came ; were kept, as
Bede expressly tells us, free of cost in the Irish
monasteries, and drew their first inspirations in the
Irish schools. Even now, after the lapse of all these

1 For an account of Irish missionaries in Germany, see Mr. Baring-
Gould's " Germany," in this series, p. 46.

CELTIC CHRISTIANITY. 37

centuries, many of the places whence they came
still reverberate faintly with the memory of that time.
Before plunging into that weltering tangle of
confusion which makes up what we call Irish history,
one may be forgiven for lingering a little at this
point, even at the risk of some slight over-balance of
proportion. With so dark a road before us, it seems
good to remember that the energies of Irishmen were
not, as seems sometimes to be concluded, always and
of necessity directed to injuring themselves or tor-
menting their rulers ! Neithe'r was this period by
any means a short one. It was no mere " flash in
the pan;" no " small pot soon hot " enthusiasm, but a
steady flame which burned undimmed for centuries.
" During the seventh and eighth centuries, and part
of the ninth," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, not certainly a
prejudiced writer, " Ireland played a really great
part in European history." "The new religious
houses," says Mr. Green in his Short History, " looked
for their ecclesiastical traditions, not to Rome, but to
Ireland, and quoted for their guidance the instructions
not of Gregory, but of Columba." " For a time," he
adds, " it seemed as if the course of the world's
history was to be changed, as if that older Celtic race
which the Roman and German had swept before
them, had turned to the moral conquest of their con-
querors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to
mould the destinies of the Church of the West."

V.

THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES.

AT home during th'e same period the chief events
were the founding of monasteries, and the settling
down of monastic communities, every such monastery
becoming the protector and teacher of the little
Christian community in its vicinity, educating its
own sons, and sending them out as a bee sends its
swarms, to settle upon new ground, and to fertilize
the flowers of distant harvest fields.

At one time, " The Tribes of the Saints " seem to
have increased to such an extent that they threa-
tened to absorb all others. In West Ireland especially,
little hermitages sprung up in companies of dozens
and hundreds, all over the rock-strewn wastes, and
along the sad shores of the Atlantic, dotting them-
selves like sea gulls upon barren points of rock, or
upon sandy wastes which would barely have sufficed,
one might think, to feed a goat. We see their re-
mains still — so tiny, yet so enduring — in the Isles of
Arran ; upon a dozen rocky points all round the
bleak edges of Connemara ; in the wild mountain
glens of the Burren — set often with an admirable
selection of site, in some sloping dell with, perhaps,

40 THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES.

a stream slipping lightly by and hurrying to lose
itself in the ground, always with a well or spring
brimming freshly over — an object still of reverence to
the neighbouring peasants. Thanks to the innate
stability of their material, thanks, too, to the super-
abundance of stone in these regions, which makes them
no temptation to the despoiler, they remain, roofless
but otherwise pretty much as they were. We can
look back across a dozen centuries with hardly the
change of a detail.

In these little western monasteries each cell stood
as a rule by itself, containing — one would say very
tightly containing — a single inmate. In other places,
large buildings, however, were erected, and great
numbers of monks lived together. Some of these
larger communities are stated to have actually con-
tained several thousand brethren, and though this
sounds like an exaggeration, there can be no doubt that
they were enormously populous. The native mode of
existence lent itself, in fact, very readily to the arrange-
ment. It was merely the clan or sept re- organized upon
a religious footing. "Les premieres grands monasteres
de ITrelande," says M. de Montalembert in his
" Moines d'Occident," " ne furent done autre chose a
vrai dire qui des clans, reorganises sous une forme
religieuse." New clans, that is to say, cut out of the
old ones, their fealty simply transferred from a chief
to an abbot, who was almost invariably in the first
instance of chieftain blood. " Le prince, en se faisant
moine, devenait naturellement abbe, et restait ainsi
dans la vie monastique, ce qu'il avait etc dans la vie
seculiere le chef de sa race et de son clan."

EASY PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 41

There was thus nothing to jar with that sense of
continuity, that inborn love of the past, of old ways,
old habits, old modes of thought which made and
still makes an Irishman — be he never so pronounced
a republican — the deepest at heart of Conservatives.
Whereas every later change of faith which has been
endeavoured to be forced upon the country has met
with a steady and undeviating resistance, Christianity,
the greatest change of all, seems to have brought
with it from the first no sense of dislocation. It as-
similated itself quietly, and as it were naturally, with
what it found. Under the prudent guidance of its
first propagators, it simply gathered to itself all the
earlier objects of belief, and with merely the change
of a name, sanctified and turned them to its own uses.

ST. KEVIN'S CHURCH, GLENDALOUGH.

VI.

ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH.

ABOUT fifty years after the death of St. Patrick a
new missionary arose, one who was destined to carry
the work which he had begun yet further, to become
indeed the founder of what for centuries was the real
metropolis and centre of Western Christendom.

In 521 A.D., St. Columba was born in Donegal, of
the royal race, say the annalists, of Hy-Nial — of
the royal race, at any rate, of the great workers, doers,
and thinkers all the world over. In 565, forty-four
years later, he left Ireland with twelve companions
(the apostolic number), and started on his memor-
able journey to Scotland, a date of immeasurable
importance in the history of Western Christianity.

In that dense fog which hangs over these early
times — thick enough to try even the most penetra-
ting eyesight — there is a curious and indescribable
pleasure in coming upon so definite, so living, so
breathing a figure as that of St. Columba. In writing
the early history of Ireland, one of the greatest
difficulties which the historian — great or small —
has to encounter is to be found in that curious un-
reality, that tantalizing sense of illusiveness and inde-

CHARACTER OF ST. COLUMBA. 43

finiteness which seems to envelope every figure whose
name crops up on his pages. Even four hundred years
later the name of a really great prince and warrior like
Brian Boru, or Boruma, awakens no particular sense
of reality, nay as often as not is met by a smile of
incredulity. The existence of St. Columba no one,
however, has been found rash enough to dispute! His,
in fact, is one of those essentially self-lit figures which
seem to shed some of their own light upon every other
they come in contact with, even accidentally. Across
the waste of centuries we see him almost as he appeared
to his contemporaries. There is something friendly —
as it were, next-door-neighbourly — about the man. If
we land to-day on lona, or stand in any of the little
chapels in Donegal which bear his name, his presence
seems as real and tangible to us as that of Tasso at
Ferrara or Petrarch at Avignon. In spite of that thick
— one is inclined to say rank — growth of miracles
which at times confuse Adamnan's fine portrait of
his hero — cover it thick as lichens some monumental
slab of marble — we can still recognize his real
lineaments underneath. His great natural gifts ;
his abounding energy; his characteristically Irish
love for his native soil ; for the beloved " oaks
of Deny." We see him in his goings out and his
comings in ; we know his faults ; his fiery Celtic
temper, swift to wrath, swift to forgive when the
moment of anger is over. Above all, we feel the
charm of his abounding humanity. Like Sterne's
Uncle Toby there seems to have been something
about St. Columba which " eternally beckoned to the
unfortunate to come and take shelter under him," and

44 ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCFf.

no one apparently ever refused to respond to that
appeal.

One thing it is important here to have clearly before
the mind, as it is very apt to be overlooked. At
the time of St. Columba's ministry, England, which
during the lifetime of St. Patrick had been Roman
and Christian, had now under the iron flail of its
Saxon conquerors lapsed back into Paganism.
Ireland, therefore, which for a while had made a
part of Christendom, had been broken short off by
the heathen conquest of Britain. It was now a small,
isolated fragment of Christendom, with a great
mass of heathenism between. We can easily imagine
what a stimulus to all the eager enthusiasts of the
Faith the consciousness of this neighbourhood must
have been ; how keen the desire to rush to the assault
and to replace the Cross where it had been before.

That assault was not, however, begun by Ire-
land ; it was begun, as every one knows, by St
Augustine, a Roman priest, sent by Pope Gregory,
who landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, in
the year 597 — thirty- two years after St. Columba
left Ireland. If the South of England owes its
conversion to Rome, Northern England owes its
conversion to Ireland, through the Irish colony at
lona. Oswald, the king of Northumbria, had himself
taken refuge in lona in his youth, and when sum-
moned to reign he at once called in the Irish mission-
aries, acting himself, we are told, as their interpreter.
His whole reign was one continuous struggle with
heathenism, and although at his death it triumphed for
a time, in the end the faith and energies of the mis-

CONTROVERSIES WITH ROME. 45

sionaries carried all before them. After the final
defeat of the Mercians, under their king Penda, at
Winwoed, in 655, the struggle was practically over.
Northern and Southern England were alike once more
Christian.

One of the chief agents in this result was the Irish
monk Aidan, who had fixed his seat in the little
peninsula of Lindisfarne, and from whose monastery,
as from another lona, missionaries poured over the
North of England. At Lichfield, Whitby, and many
other places religious houses sprang up, all owing
their allegiance to Lindisfarne, and through it to
lona and Ireland.

In this very fervour there lay the seeds of a new
trouble. A serious schism arose between Western
Christendom and the Papacy. Rome, whether
spiritually or temporally, was a name which rever-
berated with less awe-inspiring sound in the ears
of Irishmen (even Irish Churchmen) than, probably,
in those of any other people at that time on the
globe. They had never come under the tremendous
sway of its material power, and until centuries after
this period — when political and, so to speak, accidental
causes drove them into its arms — its spiritual power
remained to them a thing apart, a foreign element to
which they gave at most a reluctant half adhesion.

From this it came about that early in the history
of the Western Church serious divisions sprang up
between it and the other churches, already being
fast welded together into a coherent body under
the yoke and discipline of Rome. The points in
dispute do not strike us now of any very vital im-

46 ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH.

portance. They were not matters of creed at all,
merely of external rule and discipline. A vehement
controversy as to the proper form of the tonsure,
another as to the correct day for Easter, raged for more
than a century with much heat on either side ; those
churches which owed their allegiance to lona clinging
to the Irish methods, those who adhered to Rome
vindicating its supreme and paramount authority.

At the Synod of Whitby, held in 664, these points
of dispute came to a crisis, and were adjudicated upon
by Oswin, king of Northumbria ; Bishop Colman,
Aidan's successor at Holy Island, maintaining the
authority of Columba ; Wilfrid, a Saxon priest who
had been to Rome, that of St. Peter. Oswin's own
leaning seems at first to have been towards the
former, but when he heard of the great pretensions of
the Roman saint he was staggered. " St. Peter, you
say, holds the keys of heaven and hell ? " he inquired
thoughtfully, " have they also been given then to
St. Columba ? " It was owned with some reluctance
that the Irish saint had been less favoured. " Then I
give my verdict for St. Peter," said Oswin, "lest when
I reach the gate of heaven I find it shut, and the
porter refuse to open to me." This sounds prudent,
but scarcely serious ; it seems, however, to have been
regarded as serious enough by the Irish monks. The
Synod broke up. Colman, with his Irish brethren,
and a few English ones who threw in their lot with
them, forsook Lindisfarne, and sailed away for Ireland.
From that moment the rift between them and their
English brethren grew steadily wider, and was never
afterwards thoroughly healed.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE IRISH CHURCH. 47

It does not, however, seem to have affected the
position of the Irish Church at home, nor yet to have
diminished the number of its foreign converts. Safe
in its isolation, it continued to go on in its own way
with little regard to the rest of Christendom, al-
.though in respect to the points chiefly in dispute
it after a while submitted to the Roman decision.
Armagh was the principal spiritual centre, but there
were other places, now tiny villages, barely known
by name to the tourist, which were then centres of
learning, and recognized as such, not alone in Ireland
itself, but throughout Europe. Clonard, Tallaght
•Clonmacnois ; Slane in Meath, where Dagobert II.
one of the kings of France, was educated; Kildare,
where the sacred fire — not lamp — of St. Bridget was
kept burning for centuries, all are places whose names
fill a considerable space in the fierce dialectical con-
troversy of that fiery theological age.1

This period of growth slipped all too quickly away,
but it has never been forgotten. It was the golden
time to which men looked wistfully back when growing
trouble and discord, attack from without, and dissen-
sion from within, had torn in pieces the unhappy
island which had shone like a beacon through Europe
only to become its byword. The Norsemen had not
yet struck prow on Irish strand, and the period
between the Synod of Whitby and their appearance
seems to have been really one of steady moral and
intellectual growth. Heathenism no doubt still lurked
in obscure places ; indeed traces of it may with no

1 For an excellent account of early Irish monastic life see " Ireland,
and the Celtic Church," by Professor G. Stokes.

WEST CROSS OF MONASTF.RHOICF., CO. LOUTH.

INDUSTRIES OF THE MONKS. 49

great difficulty still be discovered in Ireland, but
it did not hinder the light from spreading fast under
the stimulus which it had received from its first
founders. The love of letters, too, sprang up with the
religion of a book, and the copying of manuscripts
became a passion.

As in Italy and elsewhere, so too in Ireland, the
monks were the painters, the illuminators, the archi-
tects, carvers, gilders, and book-binders of their time.
While outside the monastery walls the fighters were
making their neighbours' lives a burden to them,
and beyond the Irish Sea the whole world as then
known was being shaken to pieces and reconstructed,
the monk sat placidly inside at his work, producing
chalices, crosiers, gold and silver vessels for the
churches, carving crosses, inditing manuscripts filled
with the most marvellously dexterous ornament ;
works, which, in spite of the havoc wrought by an
almost unbroken series of devastations which have
poured over the doomed island, still survive to form
the treasure of its people. We can have very little
human sympathy, very little love for what is noble
and admirable, if — whatever our creeds or our politics
— we fail, as we look back across that weary waste
which separates us from them, to extend our sym-
pathy and admiration to these early workers — pio-
neers in a truly national undertaking which has found
only too few imitators since.

VII.

THE NORTHERN SCOURGE.

WHILE from the fifth to the eighth century the
work of the Irish Church was thus yearly increasing,
spreading its net wider and wider, and numbering its
converts by thousands, not much good can be reported
of the secular history of Ireland during the same
period. It is for the most part a confused chronicle
of small feuds, jealousies, raids, skirmishes, retali-
ations, hardly amounting to the dignity of war, but
certainly as distinctly the antipodes of peace.

The tribal system, which in its earlier stages has
been already explained, had to some degree begun
to change its character. The struggles between the
different septs or clans had grown into a struggle
between a number of great chieftains, under whose
rule the lesser ones had come to range themselves
upon all important occasions.

As early as the introduction of Christianity Ireland
was already divided into four such aggregations of
tribes — kingdoms they are commonly called — answer-
ing pretty nearly. to the present four provinces, with
the addition of Meath, which was the appanage of
the house of Ulster, and included West Meath, Long-

DOORWAY OF MAGHERA CHURCH, LONDONDERRY.
(From a drawing by George Petrie, LL.D.)

52 THE NORTHERN SCOURGE.

ford, and a fragment of the King's County. Of the
other four provinces, Connaught acknowledged the
rule of the O'Connors, Munster that of the O'Briens,
Leinster of the McMurroughs, and Ulster of the
O'Neills, who were also in theory over-kings, or, as
the native word was, Ard-Reaghs of the entire island-
Considering what a stout fighting race they proved
in later ages — fighting often when submission would
have been the wiser policy — it is curious that in
early days these O'Neills or Hy-Nials seem to have
been but a supine race. For centuries they we're
titular kings of Ireland, yet during all that time they
seem never to have tried to transform their faint,
shadowy sceptre into a real and active one. Malachy
or Melachlin, the rival of Brian Boru, seems to have
been the most energetic of the race, yet he allowed
the sceptre to be plucked from his hands with an
ease which, judging by the imperfect light shed by
the chroniclers over the transaction, seems to be
almost unaccountable.

It is difficult to say how far that light, for which
the Irish monasteries were then celebrated, extended
to the people of the island at large. With one ex-
ception, little that can be called cultivation is, it
must be owned, discoverable, indeed long centuries
after this Irish chieftains we know were innocent
of the power of signing their own names. That
exception was in the case of music, which seems to
have been loved and studied from the first. As far
back as we can see him the Irish Celt was celebrated
for his love of music. In one of the earliest extant
annals a Cruit, or stringed harp, is described as be-

IRISH MUSIC. 53

longing to the Dashda, or Druid chieftain. It was
square in form, and possessed powers wholly or partly
miraculous. One of its strings, we are told, moved
people to tears, another to laughter. A harp in
Trinity College, known as the harp of Brian Boru,
is said to be the oldest in Europe, and has thirty
strings. This instrument has been the subject of many
controversies. O'Curry doubts it having belonged to
Brian Boru, and gives his reasons for believing that
it was among the treasures of Westminster when
Henry VIII. came to the throne in 1509, and that
it suggested the placing of the harp in the arms of
Ireland, and on the " harp grotes," a coinage of the'
period. However this may be we cannot doubt that
music had early wrought itself into the very texture
and fabric of Irish life ; airs and words, wedded
closely together, travelling down from mouth to
mouth for countless generations. Every little valley
and district may be said to have had its own tra-
ditional melodies, and the tunes with which Moore
«ixty years ago was delighting critical audiences had
been floating unheeded and disregarded about the
country for centuries.

The last ten years of the eighth century were very
bad ones for Ireland. Then for the first time the
black Viking ships were to be seen sweeping shore-
wards over the low grey waves of the Irish Channel,
laden with Picts, Danes, and Norsemen, " people,"
says an old historian, "from their very cradles dis-
sentious, Land Leapers, merciless, soure, and hardie."
They descended upon Ireland like locusts, and where-
ever they came ruin, misery, and disaster followed.

^3 ^o

<, *^

DESTRUCTION OF THE CHURCHES. 55

Their first descent appears to have been upon an
island, probably that of Lambay, near the mouth
of what is now Dublin harbour. Returning a few
years later, sixty of their ships, according to the Irish
annalists, entered the Boyne, and sixty more the Liffy.
These last were under the command of a leader who
figures in the annals as Turgesius, whose identity
has never been made very clear, but who appears to
be the same person known to Norwegian historians
as Thorkels or Thorgist.

Whatever his name he was undoubtedly a bad
scourge to Ireland. Landing in Ulster, he burned
the cathedral of Armagh, drove out St. Patrick's
successors, slaughtered the monks, took possession
of the whole east coast, and marching into the centre
of the island, established himself in a strong position
near Athlone.

Beyond all other Land Leapers, this Thorgist, or
Turgesius, seems to have hated the churches. Not
content with burning them, and killing all priests
and monks he could find, his wife, we are told, took
possession of the High Altar at Clonmacnois, and
used it as a throne from which to give audience, or
to utter prophecies and incantations. He also ex-
acted a tribute of " nose money," which if not paid
entailed the forfeit of the feature it was called after.
At last three or four of the tribes united by despair
rose against him, and he was seized and slain ; an
event about which several versions are given, but the
most authentic seems to be that he was taken by
stratagem and drowned in Lough Owel, near Mul-
lingar, in or about the year 845.

56 THE NORTHERN SCOURGE.

He was not, unfortunately, the last of the Land
Leapers ! More and more they came, sweeping in
from the north, and all seem to have made direct
for the plunder of the monasteries, into which the
piety of centuries had gathered most of the valuables
of the country. The famous round towers, or
" Clocthech " of Ireland, have been credited with a
hundred fantastic origins, but are now known not to
date from earlier than about the eighth or ninth cen-
tury, are always found in connection with churches or
monasteries, and were unquestionably used as defences
against these northern invaders. At the first sight
of their unholy prows, rising like water snakes above
the waves, all the defenceless inmates and refugees
all the church plate and valuables, and all sickly or
aged brothers were hurried into these monastic keeps ;
the doors — set at a height of from ten to twenty feet
above the ground — securely closed, the ladders drawn
up, food supplies having been no doubt already laid
in, and a state of siege began.

It is a pity that the annalists, who tell us so
many things we neither care to hear nor much
believe in, should have left us no record of any assault
of the Northmen against one of these redoubtable
towers. Even at the present day they would, without
ammunition, be remarkably difficult nuts to crack ;
indeed, it is hard to see how their assault could have
been successfully attempted, save by the slow process
of starvation, or possibly by fires kindled immediately
below the entrance, and so by degrees smoking out
their inmates.

If any one ever succeeded in getting into them, we

58 THE NORTHERN SCOURGE.

may be sure the Land Leapers did ! Before long they
appear to have gathered nearly the whole spoil of the
country into the towns, which they built and fortified
for themselves at intervals along the coast. Cork,
Waterford, Limerick, Wexford, and Dublin, all owe
their origin in the first instance to the Northmen ;
indeed it is a curious fact that Dublin can never be
said, save for very short periods to have belonged
to the Irish at all. It was first the capital of their
northern invaders, and afterwards that, of course, of
the English Government

Three whole centuries the Danish power lasted,
and internecine war raged, a war during which almost
every trace of earlier civilizing influences, all those
milder habits and ways of thought, which Chris-
tianity had brought in and fostered, perished well-
nigh utterly. The ferocity of the invaders communi-
cated itself to the invaded, and the whole history is
one confused and continual chronicle of horrors and
barbarities.

An important distinction must be made at this point
between the effects of the Northern invasion in Eng-
land and in Ireland. In the former the invaders and
natives became after a while more or less assimilated,
and, under Canute, an orderly government, composed
of both nationalities, was, we know, established. In
Ireland this was never the case. The reason, doubt-
less, is to be found in the far closer similarity of race
in the former case than the latter. In Ireland the
" Danes," as they are popularly called, were always
strangers, heathen tyrants, hated and despised op-
pressors, who retorted this scorn and hatred in the

RAIDS OF THE NORTHMEN. 59

fullest possible measure upon their antagonists. From
the moment of their appearance down to the last we
hear of them — as long, in fact, as the Danes of the
seaport towns retained any traces of their northern
origin — so long they continued to be the deadly foes
of the rest of the island.

Even where the Northmen accepted Christianity,
it does not appear to have had any strikingly ame-
liorating effect. Thus we read that Godfrid, son of
Sitric, embraced Christianity in 948, and in the very
next year we discover that he plundered and burnt
all the churches in East Meath, killing over a hundred
people who had taken refuge in them, and carrying
off a quantity of captives. Land-leaping, too, con-
tinued in full force. " The godless hosts of pagans
swarming o'er the Northern Sea," continued to arrive
in fresh and fresh numbers from their inexhaustible
Scandinavian breeding grounds — from Norway, from
Sweden, from Denmark, even, it is said, from Ice-
land. The eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries are, in
fact, the great period all over Europe for the incursions
of the Northmen — high noon, so to speak, for those
fierce and roving sons of plunder, — " People," says
an old historian quaintly, "desperate in attempting
the conquest of other Realmes, being very sure to
finde warmer dwellings anywhere than in their own
homes."

VIII.

BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.

AT last a time came for their oppression to be
cut short in Ireland. Two valiant defenders sprang
almost simultaneously into note. One of these was
Malachy, or Melachlin, the Ard-Reagh and head of
the O'Neills, the same Malachy celebrated by Moore
as having " worn the collar of gold which he won
from the proud invader." The other, Brian Boroimhe,
commonly known to English writers as Brian Boru,
a chieftain of the royal Dalcassian race of O'Brien,
and the most important figure by far in Irish native
history, but one which, like all others, has got so
fogged and dimmed by prejudice and misstatement,
that to many people his name seems hardly to convey
any sense of reality at all.

Poor Brian Boru ! If he could have guessed
that he would have come to be regarded, even by
some who ought to know better, as a sort of giant
Cormoran or Eat-'em-alive-oh ! a being out of a fairy
tale, whom nobody is expected to take seriously ; nay,
as a symbol, as often as not, for ridiculous and in-
flated pretension. No one in his own day doubted
his existence ; no one thought of laughing at his

SLAUGHTER OF THE DANES. 6 1

name. Had they done so, their laughter would have
come to a remarkably summary conclusion !

Brian Boroimhe, Boruma, or Boru — his name is
written in all three ways — was not only a real man,
but he was, what was more important, a real king,
and not a mere simulacrum or walking shadow of
one, like most of those who bore the name in Ireland.
For once, for the only time as far as its native history
is concerned, there was some one at the helm who
knew how to rule, and who, moreover, did rule. His
proceedings were not, it must be owned, invariably
regulated upon any very strict rule of equity. He
meant to be supreme, and to do so it was necessary to
wrest the power from the O'Neills upon the one hand,
and from the Danes on the other, and this he pro-
ceeded with the shortest possible delay to do.

He had a hard struggle at first. Munster had been
overrun by the Danes of Limerick, who had defeated
his brother, Mahon, king of Munster, and forced him
to pay tribute. Brian himself, scorning to submit to
the tyrants, had taken to the mountains with a small
band of followers. Issuing from this retreat, he with
some difficulty induced his brother once more to
confront the aggressors. An important battle was
fought at Sulcost, near Limerick, in the year 968,
in which the Danes were defeated, and fled back in
confusion to their walls, the Munster men, under
Brian, following fast at their heels, and entering at
the same time. The Danish town was seized, the
fighting men were put to the sword, the remainder
fled or were enslaved.

Mahon being some years afterwards slain, not by

DEFEAT OF MALACHY. 63

the Danes, but by certain treacherous Molloys and
O'Donovans, who had joined themselves with him,
Brian succeeded to the sovereignty of Munster, and
shortly afterwards seized upon the throne of Cashel,
which, upon the alternate system then prevailing, was
at that time reigned over by one of the Euganian
house of Desmond. Having avenged his brother's
murder upon the O'Donovans, he next proceeded to
overrun Leinster, rapidly subdued Ossory, and began
to stretch out his hands towards the sovereignty of
the island.

In the meantime the over-king, Malachy, had de-
feated the Danes at the battle of Tara, and was con-
sequently in high honour, stronger apparently then
any of his predecessors had been. In spite of this
Brian by degrees prevailed. With doubtful patriotism
he left the Danes for a while unpursued, attacked
Meath, overran and wasted Connaught, and returning
suddenly burnt the royal stronghold of Tara. After
a long and wearisome struggle, Malachy yielded, and
allowed Brian to become Ard-Reagh in his place,
retaining only his own ancestral dominions of Meath.
He seems to have been a placable, easy-going mank
" loving," say the annalists, " to ride a horse that had
never been handled or ridden," and caring more for
this than for the cares of the State.

After this, Brian made what may be called a royal
progress through the country, receiving the sub-
mission of the chiefs and inferior kings, and forcing
them to acknowledge his authority. In speaking of
him as king of Ireland, which in a sense he un-
doubtedly was, we must be careful of letting our

64 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.

imaginations carry us into any exaggerated idea
of what is meant by that word. His name, " Brian of
the Tribute," is our safest guide, and enables us to
understand what was the position of even the greatest
and most successful king under the Celtic system. It
was the exact opposite of the feudal one, and this
difference proved the source in years to come of
an enormous amount of misconception, and of fierce
accusations of falsehood and treachery flung pro-
fusely from both sides. The position of the over-
king or Ard-Reagh was more nearly allied to that of
the early French suzerain or the German emperor.
He could call upon his vassal or tributary kings to
aid him in war times or in any sudden emergency,
but, as regards their internal arrangements — the
government, misgovernmerit, or non-government of
their several sub-kingdoms — they were free to act as
they pleased, and he was not understood to have any
formal jurisdiction.

For all that Brian was an unmistakable king,
and proved himself to be one. He defeated the
Danes again and again, reducing even those inveterate
disturbers of the peace to a forced quiescence ; entered
Dublin, and remained there some time, taking, say
the annalists, " hostages and treasure." By the year-
1002 Ireland had a master, one whose influence
made itself felt over its whole surface. For twelve
years at least out of its distracted history the country
knew the blessings of peace. Broken by defeat the
Danish dwellers of the seaport towns began to turn
their energies to the milder and more pacific activi-
ties of trade. The ruined monasteries were getting

66 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.

rebuilt ; prosperity was beginning to glimmer faintly
upon the island ; the chiefs, cowed into submission,
abstained from raiding, or confined their raids to
discreeter limits. Fortresses were being built, roads
made, and bridges repaired in three at least of the
provinces. Another twenty years of Brian's rule and
the whole future history of Ireland might have been
a different one.

It was not to be however. The king was now old,
and the work that he had begun, and which, had he
been followed by a successor like himself, might have
been accomplished, was destined to crumble like a
half-built house. The Danes began to stir again. A
rebellion had sprung up in Leinster, the coast- line of
which was strong-holded at several points with Danish
towns. This rebellion they not only aided with their
own strength, but further appealed for assistance to
their kinsmen in Northumbria, Man, the Orkneys, and
elsewhere, who responded by sending a large force
under Brodar, a Viking, and Sigurd Earl of Orkney
to their aid.

This force Brian gathered all his energies to
oppose. With his own Munster clansmen, aided by
all the fighting men of Meath and Connaught, with
his five sons and with his old rival, King Malachy
of Meath, fighting under his banner, he marched
down to the strand of Clontarf, which stretches from
the north of Dublin to the out-jutting promontory of
Howth, and there, upon Good Friday, 1014, he en-
countered his Leinster rebels and the Viking host of
invaders, ten thousand strong it is said, and a great
battle was fought, a battle which, beginning before

THE DEFEAT OF THE VIKINGS. 67

the dawn, lasted till the sun was beginning to
sink.

To understand the real importance of this battle,
we must first fully realize to ourselves what a very
old quarrel this was. For three long weary centuries
Ireland had been lying bound and broken under the
heel of her pagan oppressors, and only with great
difficulty and partially had escaped within the last
fifteen or sixteen years. Every wrong, outrage, and
ignominy that could be inflicted by one people upon
another had been inflicted and would most assuredly
be inflicted again were this battle, now about to be
fought, lost.

Nor upon the other side were the motives much
less strong. The Danes of Dublin under Sitric stood
fiercely at bay. Although their town was still their
own, all the rest of the island had escaped from the
grasp of their race. Whatever Christianity they
may occasionally have assumed was all thrown to
the winds upon this great occasion. The far-famed
pagan battle flag, the Raven Standard, was unfurled,
and floated freely over the host The War-arrow
had been industriously sent round to all the neigh-
bouring shores, peopled largely at that time with men
of Norse blood. As the fleet swept south it had
gathered in contingents from every island along the
Scotch coast, upon which Viking settlements had been
established. Manx men, too, and men from the Scan-
dinavian settlements of Anglesea, Danes under Carle
Canuteson, representatives, in fact, of all the old fight-
ing pagan blood were there, and all gathered together
to a battle at once of races and of creeds.

68 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.

On the Irish side the command had been given by
Brian to Morrogh, his eldest son, who fifteen years
before had aided his father in gaining a great victory
over these same Dublin Danes at a place called
Glenmama, not far from Dunlaven. The old king
himself abstained from taking any part in the battle.
Perhaps because he wished his son — who already had
been appointed his successor — to have all the glory
and so to fix himself yet more deeply in the hearts
of his future subjects ; perhaps because he felt that
his strength might not have carried him through the
day ; perhaps — the annalists say this is the reason —
because the day being Good Friday he preferred
praying for his cause rather than fighting for it.
Whatever the reason it is certain that he remained
in his tent, which was pitched on this occasion not
far from the edge of the great woods which then
covered all the rising ground to the north-west
of Dublin, beginning at the bank of the river
Liffy.

The onset was not long delayed. The Vikings
under Sigurd and Brodar fought as only Vikings
could fight. Like all battles of that period it resolved
itself chiefly into a succession of single combats, which
raged all over the field, extending, it is said, for over
two miles along the strand. The Danish women, and
the men left to guard the town, crowded the roofs,
remaining all day to watch the fight. Sigurd of
Orkney was killed in single combat by Thorlogh, the
son of Morrogh, and grandson of Brian ; Armud and
several of the other Vikings fell by the hand of
Morrogh, but in the end the father and son were

DEATH OF BRIAN. 69

both slain, although the latter survived long enough
to witness the triumph of his own side.

Late in the afternoon the Northmen broke and
fled ; some to their ships, some into the town, some
into the open country beyond. Amongst the latter
Brodar, the Viking, made for the great woods, and
in so doing passed close to where the tent of the
king had been fixed. The attendants left to guard
Brian had by this time one by one slipped away to
join the fight, and the old man was almost alone, and
kneeling, it is said, at the moment on a rug in the
front of his tent. The sun was low, but the slanting
beams fell upon his bent head and long white beard.
One of Brodar's followers perceived him and pointed
him out to his leader, saying that it was the king.
" King, that is no king, that is a monk, a shaveling ! "
retorte.! the Viking. " It is not, it is Brian himself,"
was the answer.

Then Brodar caught his axe and rushed upon Brian.
Taken unawares the king nevertheless rallied his
strength which in his day had been greater than that
of any man of his time, and still only half risen from
his knees he smote the Viking a blow across the legs
with his sword. The other thereupon lifted his battle-
axe, and smote the king upon his head, cleaving it
down to the chin, then fled to the woods, but was
caught the next day and hacked into pieces by some
of the infuriated Irish.

So fell Brian in the very moment of victory, and
when the combined league of all his foes had fallen
before him. When the news reached Armagh, the
bishop and his clergy came south as far as Swords,

76 BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.

in Meath, where they met the corpse of the king
and carried it back to Armagh, where he was buried,
say the annalists, " in a new tomb " with much weep-
ing and lamentation.

CORMAC'S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER, ROCK OF CASHEL.

IX.

FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW.

WHATEVER lamentations were tittered on this
occasion were certainly not uncalled for, for a greater
disaster has rarely befallen any country or people.
Were proof wanted — which it hardly is — of that
notorious ill-luck which has dogged the history of
Ireland from the very beginning, it would be difficult
to find a better one than the result of this same
famous battle of Clontarf. Here was a really great
victory, a victory the reverberation of which rang
through the whole Scandinavian world, rejoicing
Malcolm of Scotland, who without himself striking
a blow, saw his enemies lying scotched at his feet,
so scotched in fact, that after the defeat of Clontarf
they never again became a serious peril. Yet as
regards Ireland itself what was the result ? The
result was that all those ligaments of order which
were beginning slowly to wind themselves round it,
were violently snapped and scattered to the four
winds. As long as Brian's grasp was over it Ireland
was a real kingdom, with limitations it is true, but
still with a recognized centre, and steadily growing
power of combined and concerted action. At his

STRUGGLE FOR THE SOVEREIGNTY. 73

death the whole body politic was once more broken
up, and resolved itself into its old anarchic elements
again.

It would have been better far for the country had
Brian been defeated, so that he, his son Morrogh, or
any capable heir had survived, better for it indeed had
he never ruled at all if this was to be end. By his
successful usurpation the hereditary principle — always
a weak one in Ireland — was broken down. The
one chance of a settled central government was thus
at an end. Every petty chief and princeling all
over the island felt himself capable of emulating the
achievements of Brian. It was one of those cases
which success and only success justifies. Ireland
was pining, as it had always pined, as it continued
ever afterwards to pine, for a settled government ;
for a strong central rule of some sort. The race of
Hy.-Nial had been titular kings for centuries, but they
had never held the sovereignty in anything but name.
Pushing their claims aside, and gathering all power
into his own hands Brian had acted upon a small
stage the part of Charlemagne centuries earlier upon
a large one. He had succeeded, and in his success
lay his justification. With his death, however, the
whole edifice which he had raised crumbled away, and
anarchy poured in after it like a torrent. A struggle
set in at once for the sovereignty, which ended by
not one of Brian's sons but the deposed King Malachy
being set upon the throne. Like his greater rival he
was however by this time a very old man. His spirit
had been broken, and though the Danes had been too
thoroughly beaten to stir, other elements of disorder

74 FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW.

abounded. Risings broke out in two of the provinces
at once, and at his death the confusion became con-
founded. As a native rhyme runs :

"After Malachy, son of Donald,
Each man ruled his own tribe,
But no man ruled Erin."

Henceforward throughout the rather more than a
century and a half which intervened between the
battle of Clontarf and the Norman invasion, Ireland
remained a helpless waterlogged vessel, with an unruly
crew, without rudder or compass, above all, without
a captain. The house of O'Brien again pushed its
way to the front, but none of Brian's descendants
who survived the day of Clontarf seem to have
shown a trace even of his capacity. A fierce feud
broke out shortly after between Donchad, his son,
and Turlough, one of his grandsons, and each
successively caught at the helm, but neither suc-
ceeding in obtaining the sovereignty of the entire
island. After the last-named followed Murhertach
also of the Dalcassian house, at whose death the rule
once more swung round to the house of Hy.-Nial
and Donald O'Lochlin reigned nominally until his
death in 1121. Next the O'Connors, of Connaught,
took a turn at the sovereignty, and seized possession
of Cashel which since its capture by Brian Boroimhe
had been the exclusive appanage of the Dalcassians.
Another O'Lochlin, of the house of O'Neill, then
appears prominently in the fray, and by 1156, seems
to have succeeded in seizing the over-lordship of the
island, and so the tale goes on — a wearisome one,

A NEW STAGS.

75

unrelieved by even a transitory gleam of order or
prosperity. At last it becomes almost a relief when
we reach the name of Roderick O'Connor, and know
that before his death fresh actors will have entered
upon the scene, and that the confused and baffling
history of Ireland will, at all events, have entered
upon a perfectly new stage.

ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH.

X.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

THE invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans
differs in several respects from other invasions and
conquests, not the least singular feature about it
being that nearly the whole of that famous band of
knightly adventurers who took part in it, and to whose
audacity it was in the first instance due, were more or
less closely related to one another, either as brothers,
nephews, uncles, or cousins. The connecting link
between these variously - named relations was one
Nesta, princess of South Wales, daughter of a Welsh
king, Rice ap Tudor, a heroine whose adventures
are of a sufficiently striking, not to say startling,
character. By dint of a succession of alliances, some
regular, others highly irregular, she became the ances-
tress of nearly all the great Anglo-Norman families in
Ireland. Of these the Fitzgeralds, Carews, Barrys,
and Cogans, are descended from her first husband,
Gerald of Windsor. Robert FitzStephen, who plays, as
will presently be seen, a prominent part in the conquest,
was the son of her second husband, Stephen, the
Castlelan of Abertivy, while Robert and Meiler Fitz-
Henry, of whom we shall also hear, are said to have

WEST FRONT OF ST. CRONAN's CHURCH, ROSCREA.
(From a Photograph.)

78 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

been the sons of no less a person than King Henry I.
of England.

Conspicuous amongst this band of knights and
adventurers was one who was himself no knight, but
a priest and the self-appointed chronicler of the rest,
Gerald de Barri — better known as Gerald of Wales,
or Giraldus Cambrensis, who was the grandson of
Nesta, through her daughter Angareta.

Giraldus is one of those writers whom, to tell the
truth, we like a great deal better than they deserve.
He is prejudiced to the point of perversity, and gullible
almost to sublimity, uncritical even for an eminently
uncritical age, accepting and retailing any and every
monstrous invention, the more readily apparently in
proportion to its monstrosity. For all that — despite
his prejudices, despite even his often deliberate per-
version of the truth, it is difficult to avoid a certain
kindliness for him. To the literary student he is
indeed a captivating figure. With his half- Welsh, half-
Norman blood ; with the nimble, excitable, distinctly
Celtic vein constantly discernible in him ; with a love
of fighting which could hardly have been exceeded by
the doughtiest of the knights, his cousins and brothers ;
with a pen that seems to fly like an arrow across the
page ; with a conceit which knows neither stint nor
limit, he is the most entertaining, the most vividly
alive of chroniclers; no historian certainly in any rigid
sense of the word, but the first, as he was also unques-
tionably the chief and prince of war correspondents.

Whether we like him or not, we at any rate cannot
dispense with him, seeing that nearly everything we
know of the Ireland of the Conquest, we know from

GIRALDUS — THE IRISH CHURCH. Jg

those marvellous pages of his, which, if often ex-
asperating, are at any rate never dull. In them, as
in a mirror, we see how, when, and where the whole
plan of the campaign was laid ; who tpok part in it ;
what they said, did, projected ; their very motives and
thoughts — the whole thing stands out fresh and alive
as if it had happened yesterday.

There were no lack of motives, any of which would
have been temptation enough for invasion. To the
pious it took on the alluring guise of a Crusade. The
Irish Church, which had obtained such glowing fame
in its early days, had long since, as we have seen,
grown into very bad repute with Rome. Despite
that halo of early sanctity, she was held to be seri-
ously tainted with heresy. She allowed bishops to
be irregularly multiplied, and consecrated contrary
to the Roman rule by one bishop only ; tithes and
firstfruits were not collected with any regularity ;
above all, the collection of Peter's pence, being the
sum of one penny due from every household, was
always scandalously in arrears, nay, often no attempt
was made to collect it at all. She did many wrong
things, but it may shrewdly be suspected that this
was one of the very worst of them.

It is not a little edifying at this juncture to find the
Danes of Dublin amongst those who were enlisted upon
the orthodox side. Cut off by mutual hatred rather
than theological differences from the Church of Ireland,
they had for some time back been regularly applying
to Canterbury for their supply of priests. These priests
upon being sent over painted the condition of Irish
heterodoxy in tints of the deepest black for their own

WEST DOORWAY OF FRESHFORD CHURCH, CO. KILKENNY.
(from a Photograph.)

DERMOT MCMURROUGH. 8l

countrymen. Eveti before this there had been grave
complaints. Lanfranc, Anselm, St. Bernard of Clair-
vaux, all had had their theological ire aroused against
the Irish recusants. Many of the Irish ecclesiastics
themselves seem to have desired that closer union
with Rome, which could only be brought about by
bringing Ireland under the power of a sworn son of
the Church. Henry I. — little as that most secular-
minded of monarchs cared probably for the more
purely theological question — was fully alive to its
value as supporting his own claims. He obtained
from Pope Hadrian IV. (the Englishman Brake-
speare), a Bull sanctioning and approving of the con-
quest of Ireland as prompted by " the ardour of faith
and love of religion," in which Bull he is desired to
enter the island and therein execute " whatever shall
pertain to the honour of God, and the welfare of the
land."

Fourteen years elapsed before the enterprise thus
warmly commended was carried into effect. The
story of Dermot McMurrough, king of Leinster, and
his part in the invasion, has often been told, and does
not, I think, need dwelling upon at any great length.
He was a brutal, violent-tempered savage, detested
in his own country, and especially by his unfortunate
subjects in Leinster. How he foully wronged the
honour of O'Rorke, a chieftain of Connaught ; how,
for this and other offences, he was upon the accession
of Roderick O'Connor driven away from Ireland ; how
he fled to England to do homage to Henry, and seek
his protection ; how, finding him gone to Aquitaine,
he followed him there, and in return for his vows of

82 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

allegiance received letters authorizing the king's
subjects to enlist if they choose for the Irish service ;
how armed with these he went to Wales, and there
succeeded in recruiting a band of mixed Norman and
Norman-Welsh adventurers — all this is recorded at
large in the histories.

Of the recruits thus enlisted, the most important
was Robert de Clair, Earl of Pembroke and Chep-
stow, nicknamed by his contemporaries, Strongbow,
whom Dermot met at Bristol, and won over by a
double bribe — the hand, namely, of his daughter
Eva, and the succession to the sovereignty of Leinster
— a succession which, upon the Irish mode of election,
he had, it may be observed, no shadow of right to
dispose of.

Giraldus, who seems to have been himself in
Wales at the time, speaks sentimentally of the unfor-
tunate exile, and describes him inhaling the scent of
his beloved country from the Welsh coast, and feasting
his eyes tenderly upon his own land : " Although the
distance," he more prosaically adds, " being very great,
it was difficult to distinguish mountains from clouds."
As a matter of fact, Dermot McMurrough, we may
be sure, was not the person to do anything of the
sort. He was simply hungry — as a wild beast or a
savage is hungry — for revenge, and would have plunged
into any number of perjuries, or have bound himself to
give away any amount of property he had no right to
dispose of in order to get it. He could safely trust,
too, he knew, to the ignorance of his new allies as
to what was or was not a legal transfer in Ireland.
His purpose achieved, " inflamed," says Giraldus,

ASSAULT ON WEXFORD. 83

"with the desire to see his native land," but really
the better to concoct his plans, he returned home,
landing a little south of Arklovv Head, and arriving
at Ferns, where he was hospitably entertained during
the winter by its bishop. The following spring, in
the month of May, the first instalment of the invaders
arrived under Robert FitzStephen, a small fleet of
Welsh boats landing them in a creek of the bay of
Bannow, where a chasm between the rocks was long
known as " FitzStephen's stride."

Here they were met by Donald McMurrough, son
of Dermot, and ten days later drew up under the
walls of Wexford, having so far encountered no
opposition.

In this old Danish town a stout fight was made.
The townsfolk, no longer Vikings but simple traders,
did what they could in their own defence. They
burnt their suburbs, consisting doubtless of rude
wooden huts ; shut the gates, and upon the first two
assaults drove back the assailants. So violently were
they repelled, "that they withdrew," Giraldus tells
us, " in all great haste from the walls." His own
younger brother, Robert de Barri, was amongst the
wounded, a great stone falling upon his helmet and
tumbling him headlong into one of the ditches, from
the effects of which blow, that careful historian informs
us incidentally, " Sixteen years later all his jaw teeth
fell out ! "

Next morning, after mass, they renewed the as-
sault ; this time with more circumspection. Now
there were at that time, as it happened, two bishops in
the town, who devoted their energies to endeavouring

84 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

to induce the citizens to make peace. In this at-
tempt they were successful, more successful than might
have been expected with men descended from the
old Land Leapers. Wexford opened its gates, its
townsmen submitting to Dermot, who thereupon pre-
sented the town to his allies, FitzStephen, true to his
Norman instincts, proceeding forthwith to build a
castle upon the rock of Carneg, at the narrowest point
of the river Slaney, the first of that large crop of
castles which subsequently sprang up upon Irish soil.

The next sharers of the struggle were the wild
Ossory clans, who gathered to the defence of their
territory under Donough McPatrick, an old and
especially hated enemy of Dermot's. The latter had
now three thousand men at his back, in addition
to his Welsh and Norman allies. The Ossory men
fought, as Giraldus admits, with furious valour, but
upon rashly venturing out of their own forests into
the open, were charged by FitzStephen, whose horse-
men defeated them, killing a great number, over two
hundred heads being collected and laid at the feet of
Dermot, who, " turning them over, one by one, to
recognize them, lifted his hands to heaven in excess
of joy, and with a loud voice returned thanks to God
most High." So pious was Dermot !

After this, finding that the country at large was
beginning to take some note of their proceedings,
the invaders fel back upon Ferns, which they forti-
fied according to the science of the age under the
superintendence of Robert FitzStephen. Roderick
O'Connor, the Ard-Reagh, was by this time not
unnaturally beginning to get alarmed, and had

DECISION OF STRONGBOW. 85

gathered his men together against the invaders. The
winter, however, was now at hand, and a temporary
peace was accordingly patched up ; Leinster being
restored to Dermot on condition of his acknowledging
the over-lordship of Roderick. Giraldus recounts at
much length the speeches made upon both sides on
this occasion ; the martial addresses to the troops,
the many classical and flowery quotations, which last
he is good enough to bestow upon the unlucky
Roderick no less than upon his own allies. Seeing,
probably, that all were alike imaginary, it is hardly
necessary to delay to record them.

The next to arrive upon the scene was Maurice
Fitzgerald, half brother of Robert FitzStephen
and uncle of Giraldus. Strongbow meanwhile was
still upon the eastern side of the channel awaiting
the return of his uncle, Hervey de Montmorency,
whom he had sent over to report upon the condition
of affairs. Even after Hervey's return bringing with
him a favourable report, he had still the king's per-
mission to gain. Early in 1170 he again sought
Henry and this time received an ambiguous reply,
which, however, he chose to interpret in his own
favour. He sent back Hervey to Ireland, accom-
panied by Raymond Fitzgerald, surnamed Le Gros,
and a score of knights with some seventy archers.
These, landing in Kilkenny, entrenched themselves,
and being shortly afterwards attacked by the Danes
of Waterford, defeated them with great slaughter,
seizing a number of prisoners. Over these prisoners
a dispute arose ; Raymond was for sparing their
lives, Hervey de Montmorency for slaying. The

86 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

eloquence of the latter prevailed. "The citizens,"
says Giraldus, " as men condemned, had their limbs
broken and were cast headlong into the sea and so
drowned."

Shortly after this satisfactory beginning, Strongbow
himself appeared with reinforcements. He attacked
Waterford, which was taken after a short but furious
resistance, and the united forces of Dermot and the
Earl marched into the to.wn, where the marriage of
the latter with .Eva, Dermot's daughter, was cele-
brated, as Maclise has represented it in his picture,
amid lowering smoke and heaps of the dead and
dying.

Dermot was now on the top of the wave. With
his English allies and his own followers he had a con-
siderable force around him. Guiding the latter
through the Wicklow mountains, which they would
probably have hardly got through unaided, he de-
scended with them upon Dublin, and despite the
efforts of St. Lawrence O'Toole, its archbishop, to
effect a pacific arrangement, the town was taken by
assault. The principal Danes, with Hasculph, their
Danish governor, escaped to their ships and sailed
hastily away for the Orkneys.

Meath was the next point to be attacked. O'Rorke,
the old foe of Dermot, who held it for King Roderick,
was defeated ; whereupon, in defiance of his previous
promises, Dermot threw off all disguise and pro-
claimed himself king of Ireland, upon which Rode-
rick, as the only retaliation left in his power, slew
Dermot's son who had been deposited in his hands as
hostage.

SIEGE OF DUBLIN BY THE IRISH. 87

It was now Strongbow's aim to hasten back and
place his new lordship at the feet of his sovereign,
already angry and jealous at such unlocked for and
uncountenanced successes. He was not able however
to do so at once. Hasculph the Dane returned
suddenly with sixty ships, and a large force under a
noted Berserker of the day, known as John the Mr.d,
" warriors," says Giraldus, " armed in Danish fashion,
having long breast-plates and shirts of mail, their
shields round and bound about with iron. They were
iron-hearted," he says, " as well as iron-armed men."

In spite of their arms and their hearts, he is able
triumphantly to proclaim their defeat. MilodeCogan,
the Norman governor of Dublin, fell upon his as-
sailants suddenly. John the Mad was slain, as were
also nearly all the Berserkers. Hasculph was brought
back in triumph, and promptly beheaded by the con-
querors.

He was hardly dead before a new assailant, Godred,
king of Man, appeared with thirty ships at the mouth
of the Liffey. Roderick, in the meanwhile, had col-
lected men from every part of Ireland, with the excep-
tion of the north which stood aloof from him, and
now laid siege to Dublin by land, helped by St. Law-
rence its patriotic archbishop. Strongbow was thus
shut in with foes behind and before, and the like dis-
aster had befallen Robert FitzStephen, who was at
this time closely besieged in his own new castle at
Wexford. Dermot their chief native ally had recently
died. There seemed for a while a reasonable chance
that the invaders would be driven back and pushed
bodily into the sea.

88 THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

Discipline and science however again prevailed.
The besieged, excited both by their own danger and
that of their friends in the south, made a desperate
sally. The Irish army kept no watch, and was abso-
lutely undrilled. A panic set in. The besiegers fled,
leaving behind them their stores of provisions, and
the conquerors thereupon marched away in triumph
to the relief of FitzStephen. Here they were less
successful. By force, or according to Giraldus, by a
pretended tale of the destruction of all the other in-
vaders, the Wexford men seized possession of him and
the other English, and had them flung into a dungeon.
Finding that Strongbow and the rest were not de-
stroyed, but that on the contrary they were marching
down on them, the Wexford men set fire to their own
town and departed to an island in the harbour, carry-
ing their prisoner with them and threatening if
pursued to cut off his head.

Foiled in this attempt, Strongbow hastened to
Waterford, took boat there, and flew to meet the
king, whom he encountered near Gloucester with a
large army. Henry's greeting was a wrathful one.
His anger and jealousy had been thoroughly aroused.
Not unwarrantably. But for his promptness his
headstrong subjects — several of them it must be re-
membered of his own dominant blood — would have
been perfectly capable of attempting to carve out a
kingdom for themselves at his very gates. Happily
Strongbow had found the task too large for his unaided
energies, and, as we have seen, had barely escaped
annihilation. He was ready, therefore, to accept any
terms which his sovereign chose to impose. His sub-

LANDING OF HENRY II. IN IRELAND.

89

mission appears to have disarmed the king. He al-
lowed himself to be pacified, and after a while they
returned to Ireland together. Henry II. landed at
Waterford in the month of October, 1171.

SOUTH WINDOW OF ST. CAIMIN's CHURCH, INISMAIN.

XL

HENRY II. IN IRELAND.

THIS was practically the end of the struggle. The
king had four thousand men-at-arms at his back, of
whom no less than four hundred were knights. In
addition his ships contained vast stores of provisions,
a variety of war devices never before seen in Ireland,
artizans for building bridges and making roads — a
whole war train, in short Such a display of force was
felt to be irresistible. The chieftains one after the other
came in and made their submission. Dermot Mc-
Carthy, lord of Desmond and Cork, was the first to
do homage, followed by Donald O'Brien, Prince of
Thomond ; while another Donald, chieftain of Ossory,
rapidly followed suit. The men of Wexford ap-
peared, leading their prisoner with them by a chain,
and presenting him as an offering to his master, who,
first rating him soundly for his unauthorized proceed-
ings, ordered him to be chained to another prisoner
and shut up in Reginald's tower. Later, soothed by
his own triumph, or touched, as Giraldus tells us, with
compassion for a brave man, he, at the intercession of
some of his courtiers, forgave and restored him to his
possessions, reserving, however, the town of Wexford
for himself.

SUBMISSION OF THE IRISH. QI

From Wexford Henry marched to Dublin, having
first visited Tipperary and Waterford. The Danes at
once submitted and swore allegiance ; so also did
O'Carrol of Argial, O'Rorke of Brefny, and all the
minor chieftains of Leinster ; Roderick O'Connor still
stood at bay behind the Shannon, and the north also
remained aloof and hostile, but all the other chieftains,
great and small, professed themselves willing to be-
come tributaries of the king of England.

The idea of an Ard-Reagh, or Over-lord, was no new
one, as we have seen, to any of them. Theoretically
they had always acknowledged one, although, practi-
cally, he had rarely exercised any authority save over
his own immediate subjects. Their feeling about
Henry was doubtless the same. They were as willing
to swear fealty to him as to Roderick O'Connor, more
so in fact, seeing that he was stronger than Roderick,
but that was all. To Henry and to his successors
this recognition carried with it all the complicated
dependence of feudalism, which in England meant
that his land and everything else which a man pos-
sessed was his only so long as he did service for it
to the king. To these new Irish subjects, who had
never heard of feudalism, it entailed nothing of the
sort. They regarded it as a mere vague promise of
adhesion, binding them at most to a general muster
or " hosting " under his arms in case of war or some
common peril. This was an initial misconception,
which continued, as will be seen, to be a deeper and
deeper source of confusion as the years went on.

In the meanwhile Henry was established in Dublin,
where he kept Christmas in high state, occupying a

Q2 HENRY II. IN IRELAND.

palace built in the native fashion of painted wicker-
work, set up just outside the walls. Here he enter-
tained the chiefs, who were naturally astonished at the
splendour of his entertainments. " They learnt,"
Giraldus observes with satisfaction, " to eat cranes " —
does this mean herons ? — " a species of food which they
had previously loathed ; " and, in general, were suitably
impressed with the greatness and glory of the con-
queror. The bishops were most of them already warmly
in his favour, and at a synod shortly afterwards held
at Cashel, at which all the Irish clergy were repre-
sented, the Church of Ireland was solemnly declared to
be finally united to that of England, and it was laid
down that, " as by Divine Providence Ireland has re-
ceived her lord and king from England, so she should
also submit to a reformation from the same source."
The weather that winter was so rough that hardly
a ship could cross the channel, and Henry in his new
kingdom found himself practically cut off from his
old one. About the middle of Lent, the wind veering
at last to the east, ships arrived from England and
Aquitaine, bearers of very ill news to the king. Two
legates were on their way, sent by the Pope, to inquire
into the murder of Becket, and armed in case of an
unsatisfactory reply with all the terrors of an interdict.
Henry hastily made over the government of Ireland
to Hugo de Lacy, whom he placed in Dublin as his
representative, and sailed from Wexford upon Easter
Monday. He never again revisited his new dominions,
where many of the lessons inculcated by him — in-
cluding possibly the delights of eating cranes — were
destined before long to be forgotten.

XII.

EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

HENRY had been only six months in Ireland, but
he had accomplished much — more certainly than any
other English ruler ever accomplished afterwards
within the same time. He had divided the ceded
districts into counties ; had appointed sheriffs for
them ; had set up three Law Courts — Bench, Pleas,
and Exchequer ; had arranged for the going on circuit
by judges ; and had established his own character for
orthodoxy, and acquitted himself of his obligations
to the papacy by freeing all church property from the
exactions of the chiefs, and rigidly enforcing the
payment of tithes.

In a still more important point — that about which
he was evidently himself most tenacious — his success
was even more complete. He once for all put a stop
to all danger of an independent lordship by forcing
those who had already received grants of land from
the native chiefs to surrender them into his hands, and
to receive them back direct from himself, according to
the ordinary terms of feudal tenure.

That he had larger and more statesmanlike views
for the new dependency than he was ever able to

94 EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.

carry out there can be no question. As early as 1 177
he appointed his youngest son John king of Ireland,
and seems to have fully formed the intention of
sending him over as a permanent governor or viceroy,
a purpose which the misconduct of that youthful
Rehoboam, as Giraldus calls him, was chiefly instru-
mental in foiling.

It is curious to hear this question of a royal viceroy
and a permanent royal residence in Ireland coming to
the front so very early in the history of English rule
there. That the experiment, if fairly tried, and tried
with a man of the calibre of Henry himself, might
have made the whole difference in the future of
Ireland, we cannot, I think, reasonably doubt. Any
government, indeed, so that it was central, so that it
gathered itself into a single hand and took its im-
press from a single mind, would have been better a
thousand times than the miserable condition of half-
conquest, half-rule, whole anarchy and confusion which
set in and continued with hardly a break

This is one reason more why it is so much to be
regretted that Ireland, save for a few years, had never
any real king or central government of her own. Had
this been the case, even if she had been eventually
conquered by England — as would likely enough have
been the case — the result of that conquest would
have been different. There would have been some
one recognized point of government and organization,
and the struggle would have been more violent and
probably more successful at first, but less chronic and
less eternally renewed in the long run. As it was, all
the conditions were at their very worst. No native ruler

LA CK OF UNITY AMONG THE IRISH. 95

of the calibre of a Brian Boru could ever again
hope to unite all Ireland under him, since long before
he arrived at that point his enemies would have
called in the aid of the new colonists, who would have
fallen upon and annihilated him, though after doing
so they would have been as little able to govern the
country for themselves as before.

This also explains what is often set down as the
inexplicable want of patriotism shown by the native
Irish in not combining more resolutely together
against their assailants. It is true that they did not
do so, but the fact is not referred to the right cause.
An Englishman of the time of the Heptarchy had, if
at all, little more patriotism, and hardly more sense
of common country. He was a Wessex man, or a
Northumbrian, or a man of the North or the East
Angles, rather than an Englishman. So too in
Ireland. As a people the Irish of that day can hardly
be said to have had any corporate existence. They
were O'Briens, or O'Neils, or O'Connors, or O' Fla-
herties, and that no doubt in their own eyes appeared
to be quite nationality enough.

Unfortunately both for the country and for his own
successors, Henry had no time to carry out his plans,
and all that he had begun to organize fell away into
disorder again after his departure. " That inconstant
sea-nymph," says Sir John Davis, " whom the Pope
had wedded to him with a ring," remained obedient
only as long as her new lord was present, and once
his back was turned she reverted to her own ways
again. The crowd of Norman and Welsh adven-
turers who now filled the country were each and

96 EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAL INVASION.

all intent upon ascertaining how much of that
country they could seize upon and appropriate for
themselves. There were many gallant men amongst
them, but there was not one apparently who had
the faintest trace of what is meant by public spirit.
Occupied only by their own interests, and struggling
solely for their own share of the spoil, they could
never really hold the country, and even those parts
which they did get into their hands lapsed back after
a while into the old condition again.

The result was that the righting never ended.
The new colonists built castles and lived shut up
in them, ruling their own immediate retainers with
an odd mixture of Brehon and Norman law. When
they issued forth they appeared clad from head to
foot in steel, ravaging the country more like foreign
mercenaries than peaceful settlers. The natives,
driven to bay and dispossessed of their lands, fought
too, not in armour, but, like the Berserkers of
old, in their shirts, with the addition at most of a
rude leather helmet, more often only with their hair
matted into a sort of cap on their foreheads in the
fashion known as the " gibbe," that " rascally gibbe "
to which Spenser and other Elizabethan writers ob-
ject so strongly. By way of defence they now and
then threw up a rude stockade of earth or stone,
modifications of the primitive rath, more often they
made no defence, or merely twisted a jungle of
boughs along the pathways to break the advance of
their more heavily armed foes. The ideas of the
two races were as dissimilar as their weapons. The
instinct of the one was to conquer a country and

TACTICS OF THE NORMANS AND THE IRISH. 97

subdue it to their own Uses ; the instinct of the other
was to trust to the country itself, and- depend upon its
natural features, its forests, morasses, and so forth for
security. The one was irresistible in attack, the
other, as his conqueror soon learnt to his cost, practi-
cally invincible in defence, returning doggedly again
and again, and a hundred times over to the ground
from which he seemed at first to have been so easily
and so effectually driven off.

All these peculiarities, which for ages continued to
mark the struggle between the two races now brought
face to face in a death struggle, are just as marked
and just as strikingly conspicuous in the first twenty
years which followed the invasion as they are during
the succeeding half-dozen centuries.

FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH.

XIII.

JOHN IN IRELAND.

HENRY had gone, and the best hopes of the new
dependency departed with him never to return again.
Fourteen years later he despatched his son John,
then a youth of nineteen, with a train of courtiers,
and amongst them our friend Giraldus, who appeared
to have been sent over in some sort of tutorial or
secretarial capacity.

The -expedition was a disastrous failure. The
chiefs flocked to Waterford to do honour to their
king's son. The courtiers, encouraged by their inso-
lent young master, scoffed at the dress, and mockingly
plucked the long beards of the tributaries. Furious and
smarting under the insult they withdrew, hostile every
man of them now to the -death. The news spread ;
the more distant and important of the chieftains
declined to appear. John and his courtiers gave
themselves up to rioting and misconduct of various
kinds. All hopes of conciliation were at an end.
A successful confederation was formed amongst the
Irish, and the English were for a while driven bodily
out of Munster. John returned to England at the
end of eight months, recalled in hot haste and high
displeasure by his father.

SUCCESS OF JOHN. 99

Twenty-five years later he came back again, this
time as king, with a motley army of mercenaries
gathered to crush the two brothers De Lacy, who
for the moment dominated all Ireland — the one,
Hugo, being Earl of Ulster, and Viceroy ; the other,
Walter, Lord of the Palatinate of Meath.

Among his many vices John had not at least that
of indolence to be laid to his charge ! He marched
direct from Waterford to Trim, the headquarters of
the De Lacys, seized the castle, moved on next day
to Kells, thence proceeded by rapid stages to Dun-
dalk, Carlingford, Downpatrick, and Carrickfergus.
Hugo de Lacy fled in dismay to Scotland. The chief-
tains of Connaught and Thomond joined their forces
with those of the king; even the hitherto indomitable
O'Neil made a proffer of submission. Leaving a gar-
rison at Carrickfergus, John marched back by Down-
patrick and Drogheda, re-entered Meath, visited
Duleek, slept a night at Kells, and so back to
Dublin, where he was met by nearly every Anglo-
Norman baron, each and all eager to exhibit their
own loyalty. His next care was to divide their ter-
ritory into counties ; to bind them over to supply
soldiers when called upon to do so by the viceroy, and
to arrange for the muster of troops in Dublin. Then
away he went again to England. He had been in the
country exactly sixty-six days.

Unpleasant man and detestable king as he was,
John had no slight share of the governing powers
of his race, and even his short stay in Ireland
did some good, enough to show what might have,
been done had a better man, and one in a little less

100 JOHN IN IRELAND.

desperate hurry, remained to hold the reins. He
had proved that, however they might ape the part,
the barons were not as a matter of fact the ab-
solute lords of Ireland ; that they had a master
beyond the sea ; one who, if aroused, could make the
boldest of them shake in his coat of mail. The lesson
was not as well learnt as it ought to have been, but it
was better at least than if it had not been learnt at all.
At that age and in its then condition a strong
ruler — native if possible, if not, foreign — was by far
the best hope for Ireland. Such a ruler, if only for
his own sake, would have had the genuine interests
of the country at heart. He might have tyrannized
himself, but the little tyrants would have been kept
at bay. Few countries — and certainly Ireland was
not one of the exceptions — were at that time ripe
for what we now mean by free institutions. Free-
dom meant the freedom of a strong government, one
that was not at the beck of accident, and was not
perpetually changing from one hand to another.
The English people found this out for themselves
centuries later during the terrible anarchy which
resulted from the Wars of the Roses, and of their
own accord put themselves under the brutal, but on
the whole patriotic, yoke of the Tudors. In Ireland
the petty masters unfortunately were always near ;
the great one was beyond the sea and not so easily
to be got at ! There was no unity ; no pretence of
even-handed justice, no one to step between the op-
pressed and the oppressor. And the result of all
this is still to be seen written as in letters of brass
upon the face of the country and woven into the
very texture of the character of its people.

XIV.

THE LORDS PALATINE.

THE jealousy shown by Henry and his sons to-
wards the earliest invaders of Ireland is doubtless
the reason why Giraldus — for a courtier and an eccle-
siastic upon his promotion — is so remarkably explicit
upon their royal failings. The Geraldines especially
seem to have been the objects of this not very
unnatural jealousy, and the Geraldines are, on
the other hand, to Giraldus himself, objects of an
almost superstitious worship. His pen never wearies
of expatiating upon their valour, fame, beauty, and
innumerable graces, laying stress especially — and
in this he is certainly borne out by the facts — upon
the great advantage which men trained in the Welsh
wars, and used all their lives to skirmishing in the
lightest order, had over those who had had no pre-
vious experience of the very peculiar warfare neces-
sary in Ireland. " Who," he cries with a burst of
enthusiasm, " first penetrated into the heart of the
enemy's country ? The Geraldines ! Who have kept
it in submission ? The Geraldines ! Who struck most
terror into the enemy ? The Geraldines ! Against
whom are the shafts of malice chiefly directed ? The

102 THE LORDS PALATINE.

Geraldines ! Oh that they had found a prince who
could have appreciated their distinguished worth !
How tranquil, how peaceful would then have been the
state of Ireland under their administration !"

Even their indignant chronicler admits however
that the Geraldines did not do so very badly for
themselves! Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest of the
brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of
Kildare and Desmond ; William, the younger, ob-
tained an immense grant of land in Kerry from
the McCarthys, indeed as time went on the lordship
of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and larger,
until it covered nearly as much ground as many a
small European kingdom. Nor was this all. The
White Knight, the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight
of Kerry were all three Fitzgeralds, all descended
from the same root, and all owned large tracts of
country. The position of the Geraldines of Kildare
was even more important, on account of their close
proximity to Dublin. In later times their great keep
at Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while their
followers swarmed everywhere, each man with a G.
embroidered upon his breast in token of his allegi-
ance. By the beginning of the sixteenth century their
power had reached to, perhaps, the highest point ever
attained in these islands by any subject. Whoever
might be called the Viceroy in Ireland it was the Earl
of Kildare who practically governed the country.

Originally there were three Palatinates — Leinster
granted to Strongbow, Meath to De Lacy, and Ulster
to De Courcy. To these two more were afterwards
added, namely, Ormond and Desmond. The power of

THE FIVE PALATINATES. 103

the Lord Palatine was all but absolute. He had his own
Palatinate court, with its judges, sheriffs, and coroners.
He could build fortified towns, and endow them with
charters. He could create as many knights as he
thought fit, a privilege of which they seem fully to
have availed themselves, since we learn that Richard,
Earl of Ulster, created no less than thirty-three upon
a single occasion. For all practical purposes the
Palatinates were thus simply petty kingdoms or prin-
cipalities, independent in everything but the name.

Strongbow, the greatest of all the territorial barons,
left no son to inherit his estates, only a daughter,
who married William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke.
Through her his estates passed to five heiresses, who
married five great nobles, namely, Warrenne, Mount-
chesny, De Vesci, De Braosa, and Gloucester. Strong-
bow's Palatinate of Leinster was thus split up into
five smaller Palatinates. As none of the new owners
moreover chose to live in Ireland, and their revenues
were merely drawn away to England, the estates were
after awhile very properly declared forfeited, and went
to the Crown. Thus the one who of all the adven-
turers had cherished the largest and most ambitious
hopes in the end left no enduring mark at all in Ireland.

Connaught — despite a treaty drawn up between
Henry I. and Cathal O'Connor, its native king — was
granted by John to William FitzAldelm de Burgh
and his son Richard, on much the same terms as Ulster
had been already granted to De Courcy, on the under-
standing, that is to say, that if he could he might
win it by the sword. De Courcy failed, but the De
Burghs were wilier and more successful. Carefully

104 THE LORDS PALATINE.

fostering a strife which shortly after broke out be-
tween the two rival princes of the house of O'Connor,
and watching from the fortress they had built for
themselves at Athlone, upon the Shannon, they seized
an opportunity when both combatants were exhausted
to pounce upon the country, and wrest the greater
part of it away from their grasp. They also drove
away the clan of O'Flaherty — owners from time im-
memorial of the region known as Moy Seola, to the
east of the bay of Galway — and forced them back
across Lough Corrib, where they took refuge amongst
the mountains of lar Connaught, descending continu-
ally in later times in fierce hordes, and wreaking their
vengeance upon the town of Galway, which had been
founded by the De Burghs at the mouth of the river
which carries the waters of Lough Corrib to the sea.
To this day the whole of this region of Moy Seola
and the eastern shores of Lough Corrib may be seen
to be thickly peppered over with ruined De Burgh
castles, monuments of some four or five centuries of
uninterrupted fighting.

At one time the De Burghs were by far the largest
landowners in Ireland. Not only did they possess an
immense tract of Connaught, but by the marriage
of Richard de Burgh's son to Maud, daughter of Hugh
de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, they became the nominal
owners of nearly all Ulster to boot. It never was
more, however, than a nominal ownership, the clutch
of the O'Neills and O'Donnels being found practic-
ally impossible to unloose, so that all the De Burghs
could be said to hold were the southern borders of
what are now the counties of Down, Monaghan, and

THE BURKES AND THE ORMONDS. 105

Antrim. When, too, William, the third Earl of Ul-
ster, was murdered in 1333, his possessions passed to
his daughter and heiress, a child of two years old.
A baby girl's inheritance was not likely, as may be
imagined, to be regarded at that date as particularly
sacred. Ulster was at once retaken by the O'Neills
and O'Connels. Two of the Burkes, or De Burghs,
Ulick and Edmund, seized Connaught and divided it
between them, becoming in due time the ancestors,
the one of the Mayos, the other of the Clanricardes.

Another of the great houses was that of the Or-
monds, descended from Theobald Walter, a nephew
of Thomas a Becket, who was created hereditary cup-
bearer or butler to Henry II. Theobald Walter
received grants of land in Tipperary and Kilkenny, as
well as at Arklow, and in 1391 Kilkenny Castle
was sold to his descendant the Earl of Ormond by
the heirs of Strongbow. The Ormonds' most marked
characteristic is that from the beginning to the end
of their career they remained, with hardly an excep-
tion, loyal adherents of the English Crown. Their
most important representative was the " great duke "
as he was called, James, Duke of Ormond, who bore
an important part in the civil wars of Charles I., and
is perhaps the most distinguished representative of all
these great Norman Irish houses, unless indeed one
of the greatest names in the whole range of English
political history — that of Edmund Burke — is to be
added to the list, as perhaps in fairness it ought.

Troublesome as it is to keep these different houses
in the memory, it is hopeless to attempt without
doing so to understand anything of the history of

106 THE LORDS PALATINE.

Ireland. In England where the ruling power was vested
first in the sovereign and later in the Parliament,
the landowners, however large their possessions, rarely
attained to more than a local importance, save of
course when one of them chanced to rise to eminence
as a soldier or a statesman. In Ireland the parliament,
throughout nearly the whole of its separate existence,
was little more than a name, irregularly summoned,
and until the middle of the sixteenth century, repre-
senting only one small corner of the country. The
kings never came ; the viceroys came and went in a
continually changing succession ; practically, therefore,
the great territorial barons constituted the backbone
of the country — so far as it could be said to have had
any backbone at all. They made war with the native
chiefs, or else made alliances with them and married
their daughters. They raided one another's proper-
ties, slew one another's kerns, and carried one another
away prisoner. Sometimes their independent action
went even further than this. The battle of Knocktovv,
of which we shall hear in due time, arose because the
Earl of Kildare's daughter had quarrelled with her
husband, the Earl of Clanricarde, and her father chose
to espouse her quarrel. Two large armies were
collected, nearly all the lords of the Pale and their
followers being upon one side, under the banner of
Kildare, a vast and undisciplined horde of natives
under Clanricarde upon the other, and the slaughter
is said to have exceeded 8,000. Parental affection is
a very attractive quality, but when it swells to such
dimensions as these it becomes formidable for the
peace of a country !

XV.

EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND.

ONE of the greatest difficulties to be faced in the
study of Irish history, no matter upon what scale, is
to discover any reasonable method of dividing our
space. The habit of distributing all historical affairs
into reigns is often misleading enough even in Eng-
land ; in Ireland it becomes simply ridiculous. What
difference can any one suppose it made to the great
bulk of the people of that country whether a Henry,
whom they had never seen, had been succeeded by an
Edward they had never seen, or an Edward by a
Henry ? No two sovereigns could have been less alike
in character or aims than Henry III. and Edward L,
yet when we fix our eyes upon Ireland the difference
is to all intents and purposes imperceptible.

That, though he never visited the country, Edward I.,
like his great-grandfather, had large schemes for the
benefit of Ireland is certain. Practically, however^
his schemes never came to anything, and the chief
effect of his reign was that the country was so largely
drawn upon for men and money for the support of
his wars elsewhere as greatly to weaken the already
feeble power of the Government, the result being that

108 EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND.

at the first touch of serious trouble it all but fell to
pieces.

Very serious trouble indeed came in the reign of
the second Edward. The battle of Bannockburn— -
the greatest disaster which ever befel the English
during their Scotch wars — had almost as marked
an effect on Ireland as on Scotland. All the ele-
ments of disaffection at once began to boil and
bubble. The O'Neills — ever ready for a fray,
and the nearest in point of distance to Scotland —
promptly made overtures to the Bruces, and Edward
Bruce, the victorious king's brother, was despatched
at the head of a large army, and landing in 1315 near
Carrickfergus was at once joined by the O'Neills, and
war proclaimed.

The first to confront these new allies was Richard
de Burgh, the " Red Earl " of Ulster, who was twice
defeated by them and driven back on Dublin. The
viceroy, Sir Edmund Butler, was the next encoun-
tered, and he also was defeated at a battle near
Ardscul, whereupon the whole country rose like one
man. Fedlim O'Connor, the young king of Con-
naught, the hereditary chieftain of Thomond, and
a host of smaller chieftains of Connaught, Munster,
and Meath, flew to arms. Even the De Lacys and
several of the other Norman colonists threw in their
lot with the invaders. Edward Bruce gained another
victory at Kells, and having wasted the country
round about, destroying the property of the colonists
and slaughtering all whom he could find, he returned
to Carrickfergus, where he was met by his brother,
King Robert, and together they crossed Ireland, de-

RAVAGES OF THE SCOTS. IOQ

scending as far south as Cashel, and burning, pillag-
ing, and destroying wherever they went. In 1316 the
younger Bruce was crowned king at Dundalk.

Such was the panic they created, and so utterly
disunited were the colonists, that for a time they
carried all before them. It is plain that Edward
Bruce — who on one side was descended both from
Strongbow and Dermot McMurrough — fully hoped
to have cut out a kingdom for himself with his sword,
as others of his blood had hoped and intended before
him. His own excesses, however, went far to prevent
that. So frightfully did he devastate the country,
and so horrible was the famine which he created, that
many even of his own army perished from it or from
the pestilence which followed. His Irish allies fell
away in dismay. English and Irish annalists, unani-
mous for once, alike exclaim in horror over his deeds.
Clyn, the Franciscan historian, tells us how he burned
and plundered the churches. The annals of Lough Ce
say that " no such period for famine or destruction
of men" ever occurred, and that people "used then to
eat one another throughout Erin." " They, the Scots,"
says the poet Spenser, writing centuries later, " utterly
consumed and wasted whatsoever was before left un-
spoyled so that of all towns, castles, forts, bridges,
and habitations they left not a stick standing, nor yet
any people remayning, for those few which yet survived
fledde from their fury further into the English Pale
that now is. Thus was all that goodly country utterly
laid waste."

Such insane destruction brought its own punish-
ment. The colonists began to recover from their

110 EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND.

dismay. Ormonds, Kildares, and Desmonds be-
stirred themselves to collect troops. The O'Connors,
who with all their tribe had risen in arms, had been
utterly defeated at Athenry, where the young king
Fedlim and no less than 10,000 of his followers are
said to have been left dead. Roger Mortimer, the new
viceroy, was re-organizing the government in Dublin.
The clergy, stimulated by a Papal mandate, had all
now turned against the invader. Robert Bruce had
some time previously been recalled to Scotland, and
Sir John de Bermingham, the victor of Athenry,
pushing northward at the head of 15,000 chosen
troops, met the younger Bruce at Dundalk. The
combat was hot, short, and decisive. The Scots were
defeated, Edward Bruce himself killed, and his head
struck off and sent to London. The rest hastened
back to Scotland with as little delay as possible. The
Scotch invasion was over.

It was over, but its effects remained. From one
end of Ireland to the other there was disaffection,
anger, revolt. England had proved too weak or
too negligent to interfere at the right time and in the
right way, and although successful in the end she
could not turn back the tide. There was a general
feeling of disbelief in the reality of her government.
A semi-national feeling had sprung up which tem-
porarily united colonists and natives in a bond of
self-defence. Norman nobles and native Irish chief-
tains threw in their lot together. The English yeo-
man class, which had begun to get established in
Leinster and Munster, had been all but utterly
destroyed by Edward Bruce, and the remnant now

THE ENGLISH BECOME IRISH. Ill

left the country in despair. The great English lords,
with the exception of Ormond and Kildare, from
this out took Irish names and adopted Irish dress
and fashions. The two De Burghs, as already stated,
seized upon the Connaught possessions of their
cousin, and divided them, taking the one Galway and
the other Mayo, and calling themselves McWilliam
Eighter and McWilliam Oughter, or the Nether
and the Further Burkes. So too with nearly all the
rest. Bermingham of Athenry, in spite of his late
famous victory over the Irish, did the same, calling
himself McYorris ; FitzMaurice of Lixnaw became
McMaurice ; FitzUrse of Louth, McMahon ; and so
on through a whole list.

Nor is it difficult to understand the motives which
led to these changes. The position of an Irish
chieftain — with his practically limitless powers of life
and death, his wild retinue of retainers whose only
law was the will of their chief — offered an irre-
sistible temptation to men of their type, and had
many more charms than the narrow and uninteresting
role of liegeman to a king whom they never saw,
and the obeying of whose behests brought them harm
rather than good. England had shown only too
plainly that she had no power to protect her Irish
colonists, of what use therefore, it was asked, for them
to call themselves any longer English ? The great
majority from that moment ceased to do so. Save
within the "five obedient shires" which came to be
known as the English Pale, " the king's writ no longer
ran." The native Irish ^warmed back from the moun-
tains and forests, and repossessed themselves of the

112

THE LORDS PALATINE.

lands from which they had been driven. No serious
attempts were made to re-establish the authority of
the law over three-fourths of the island. Within a
century and a half of the so-called conquest, save
within one small and continually narrowing area,
Ireland had ceased even nominally to belong to
England.

TRIM CASTLE ON THE BOYNE.

XVI.

THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY.

IT was not to be expected, however, that the larger
country would for very shame let her possessions thus
slip from her grasp without an effort to retain them,
certainly not when a ruler of the calibre of an Edward
III. came to the helm. Had his energies been able
to concentrate themselves upon Ireland the stream
which was setting dead against loyalty might even
then have been turned back. The royal interest would
have risen to the top of faction, as it did in England,
and would have curbed the growing and dangerous
power of the barons. That magic which surrounds
the word king might — who can say that it would not ?
— have awakened a sentiment at once of patriotism
and loyalty.

Chimerical as it may sound even to suppose such a
thing, there seems no valid reason why it might not
have been. No people admittedly are more intensely
loyal by nature than the native Irish. By their fail-
ings no less than their virtues they are extraordinarily
susceptible to a personal influence, and that devotion
which they so often showed towards their own chiefs
might with very little trouble have been awakened in

114 THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY.

favour of a king. It is one of the most deplorable of
the many deplorable facts which stud the history
of Ireland that no opening for the growth of such
sentiment was ever once presented — certainly not in
such a form that it would have been humanly possible
for it to be embraced.

Edward III. had now his chance. Unfortunately
he was too busy to avail himself of it. He had too
many irons in the fire to trouble himself much about
Ireland. If it furnished him with a supply of fighting
men — clean - limbed, sinewy fellows who could run
all day without a sign of fatigue, live on a handful
of meal, and for a lodging feel luxurious with an
armful of hay and the sheltered side of a stone— it
was pretty much all he wanted. The light-armed
Irish troop did great things at Crecy, but they were
never used at home. That Half-hold, which was the
ruin of Ireland, and which was to go on being its ruin
for many and many a century, was never more
conspicuous than during the nominal rule of the
strongest and ablest of all the Angevin kings.

Something, however, for very shame he did do. In
1361 all absentee landowners, already amounting to
no less than sixty-three, including the heads of several
of the great abbeys, were summoned to Westminster
and ordered to provide an army to accompany Lionel,
Duke of Clarence, whom he had decided upon sending
over to Ireland as viceroy.

Clarence was the king's third son, and had married
the only daughter and heiress of William de Burgh
(mentioned a little way back as a baby heiress), and
through his wife had become Earl of Ulster and the

TWO SEPARATE IRELANDS. 115

nominal lord of an enormous tract of the country
stretching from the Bay of Galway nearly up to the
coast of Donegal. Most of this had, however, already,
as we have seen, been lost. The two rebel Burkes
had got possession of the Galway portion, the
O'Neills, O'Connors, and -other chiefs had repossessed
themselves of the North. So completely indeed was
the latter lost that Ulster — nominally the patrimony
of the Duchess of Clarence — is not even alluded to
by her husband as part of the country over which
his government could attempt to lay claim.

The chief event of this visit was the summoning of
a Parliament at Kilkenny, a Parliament made memor-
able ever after by the passing of what is still known
as the Statute of Kilkenny.1 This Statute, although it
produced little effect at the time, is an extremely im-
portant one to understand, as it enables us to realize
the state to which the country had then got, and ex-
plains, moreover, a good deal that would otherwise be
obscure or confusing in the after history of Ireland.

Two distinct and separate set of rules are here
drawn up for two distinct and separate Irelands.
One is for the English Ireland, which then included
about the area of ten counties, though it afterwards
shrank to four and a few towns ; the other is for the
Ireland of the Irish and rebellious English, which
included the rest of the island ; the object being, not
as might be supposed at first sight, to unite these
two closer together, but to keep them as far apart as
possible ; to prevent them, in fact, if possible, from
ever uniting.

1 40 Edward III., Irish Statutes.

Il6 THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY.

A great many provisions are laid down by this Act,
all bearing the same aim. Marriage and fosterage
between the English and Irish are forbidden, and
declared to be high treason. So, too, is the supply of
all horses, weapons, or goods of any sort to the Irish ;
monks of Irish birth are not to be admitted into any
English monastery, nor yet Irish priests into any
English preferment. The Irish dress and the Irish
mode of riding are both punishable. War with the
natives is inculcated as a duty binding upon all good
colonists. None of the Irish, except a certain number
of families known as the " Five Bloods " (Quinque
sanguines), are to be allowed to plead at any
English court, and the killing of an Irishman is
not to be reckoned as a crime. In addition to this,
speaking the language of the country is made penal.
Any one mixing with the English, and known to be
guilty of this offence, is to lose his lands (if he has
any), and his body to be lodged in one of the strong
places of the king until he learns to repent and
amend.

The original words of this part of the Act are worth
quoting. They run as follows : " Si nul Engleys ou
Irroies entre eux memes encontre c'est ordinance et
de cei soit atteint soint sez terrez e tenez s'il eit seizez
en les maines son Seignours immediate, tanque q'il
veigne a un des places nostre Seignour le Roy, et
trove sufficient seurtee de prendre et user le lang
Englais."

One would like — merely as a matter of curiosity — to
know what appliances for the study of that not easiest
of languages were provided, and before what tribunal

THE ENACTMENTS OF DESPAIR. 117

the student had to prove his proficiency in it. When,
too, we remember that English was still, to a great
degree, tabooed in England itself; that the official
and familiar language of the Normans was French,
that French of which the Statutes of Kilkenny are
themselves a specimen, the difficulty of keeping within
the law at this point must, it will be owned, have been
considerable.

" In all this it is manifest," says Sir John Davis,
"that such as had the government of Ireland did
indeed intend to make a perpetual enmity between
the English and the Irish, pretending that the English
should in the end root out the Irish ; which, the English
not being able to do, caused a perpetual war between
the two nations, which continued four hundred and
odd years, and would have lasted unto the world's
end, if in Queen Elizabeth's reign the Irish had not
been broken and conquered by the sword."

It is easy to see that the very ferocity — as it seems
to us the utter and inconceivable ferocity — of these
enactments is in the main a proof of the pitiable and
deplorable weakness of those who passed them, and
to this weakness we must look for their excuse, so far
as they admitted of excuse at all. Weakness, especially
weakness in high places, is apt to fall back upon
cruelty to supply false strength, and a government
that found itself face to face with an entire country in
arms, absolutely antagonistic to and defiant of its
authority, may easily have felt itself driven by sheer
despair into some such false and futile exhibitions of
power. The chief sufferers by these statutes were
not the inhabitants of the wilder districts, who, for the

Tl8 THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY.

most part, escaped out of reach of its provisions,
beyond that narrow area where the Dublin judges
travelled their little rounds, and who were governed
still — when governed at all— by the Brehon laws and
Brehon judges, much as in the days of Brian Boru.
The real victims were the unhappy settlers of the Pale
and such natives as had thrown in their lot with
them, and who were robbed and harassed alike by
those without and those within. The feudal system
was one that always bore hardly upon the poor, and
in Ireland the feudal system was at its very worst.
There was no central authority ; no one to interpose
between the baronage and the tillers of the soil ; and
that state of things which in England only existed
during comparatively short periods, and under excep-
tionally weak rulers, in Ireland was continuous and
chronic. The consequence was that men escaped more
and more out of this intolerable tyranny into the com-
parative freedom which lay beyond ; forgot that they
had ever been English ; allovyed their beards, in defiance
of regulations, to grow ; pulled their hair down into a
" gibbes " upon their foreheads ; adopted fosterage,
gossipage, and all the other pleasant contraband Irish
customs ; married Irish wives, and became, to all
intents and purposes, Irishmen. The English power
had no more dangerous enemies in the days that were
to come than these men of English descent, whose
fathers had come over to found a new kingdom for her
upon the western side of St. George's Channel.

XVII.

RICHARD II. IN IRELAND.

RICHARD THE SECOND'S reign is a more defi-
nite epoch for the Irish historian than many more
striking ones, for the simple reason of two visits
having been paid by him to Ireland. The first of these
was in 1 394, when he landed at Waterford with 30,000
archers and 40,000 men at arms, an immense army
for that age, and for Ireland it was held an irresis-
tible one.

It was certainly high time for some steps to be
taken. In all directions the interests of the colonists
were going to the wall. Not only in Ulster, Minister,
and Connaught, but even in the East of Ireland, the
natives were fast repossessing themselves of all the
lands from which they had been driven. A great
chieftain, Art McMurrough, had made himself master
of the greater part of Leinster, and only by a humili-
ating use of " Black Rent," could he be kept at bay.
The towns were in a miserable state ; Limerick, Cork,
Waterford had all again and again been attacked, and
could with difficulty defend themselves. The Wicklow
tribes swarmed down to the very walls of Dublin, and
carried the cattle off from under the noses of the citizens.

120 RICHARD II. IN IRELAND.

The judges' rounds were getting yearly shorter and
shorter. The very deputy could hardly ride half-a-
dozen miles from the castle gates without danger
of being set upon, captured, and carried off for
ransom.

Richard flattered himself that he had only to
appear to conquer. He was keen to achieve some
military glory, and Ireland seemed an easy field to
win it upon. Like many another before and after him,
he found the task harder than it seemed. The great
chiefs came in readily enough ; O'Connors, O'Briens,
O'Neills, even the turbulent McMurrough himself, some
seventy-five of them in all. The king entertained them
sumptuously, as Henry II. had entertained their an-
cestors two centuries before. They engaged to be
loyal, and to answer for the loyalty of their dependants
— with some mental reservations we must conclude.
In return for this submission the king knighted the
four chiefs just named, a somewhat incongruous piece
of courtesy it must be owned. Shortly after his
knighthood, Art McMurrough, " Sir Art," was thrown
into prison on suspicion. He was released before
long, but the release failed to wipe out the affront,
and the angry chief retired, nursing fierce vengeance,
to his forests.

Richard remained in Ireland nine months, during
which he achieved nothing, and departed leaving
the government in the hands of his heir-presump-
tive, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the grandson
of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and, therefore, in right of
his mother, Earl of Ulster, and the nominal owner of
an immense territory, covering nearly a~ third of the

ART MCMURROUGH. 121

island, barely one acre of which, however, remained in
his hands.

The king had not been gone long before Art
McMurrough rose again. The young deputy was in
Wicklow, endeavouring to carry out a projected
colony. Hearing of this outbreak, he hastened into
Meath. An encounter took place near Kells. Art
McMurrough, at the head of his own men, aided by
some wild levies of O'Tooles and O'Nolans, com-
pletely defeated the royal army, and after the battle
the heir of the English Crown was found amongst the
slain.

This Art McMurrough, or Art Kavangh, as he is
sometimes called, was a man of very much more for-
midable stamp than most of the nameless freebooters,
native or Norman, who filled the country. His
fashion of making his onset seems to have been
tremendous. Under him the wild horsemen and "naked
knaves," armed only with skeans and darts, sent terror
into the breast of their armour-clad antagonists. One
of the few early illustrations of Irish history extant
represents him as charging at breakneck pace down
a hill. We are told that " he rode a horse without a
saddle or housing, which was so fine and good that
it cost him four hundred cows. In coming down the
hill it galloped so hard that in my opinion," says a con-
temporary writer, " I never in all my life saw hare, deer,
sheep, or other animal, I declare to you for a certainty,
run with such speed. In his right hand he bore a
great dart, which he cast with much skill."1 No
wonder that such a rider, upon such a horse, should

1 " Metrical History of the Deposition of Richard II."

122 RICHARD II. IN IRELAND.

have struck terror into the very souls of the colonists,
and induced them to comply with any demands, how-
ever rapacious and humiliating, rather than have to
meet him face to face in the field.

The news of McMurrough's victory and of the death
of his heir brought Richard back again to Ireland. He
returned in hot wrath resolved this time to crush the
delinquents. At home everything seemed safe. John
of Gaunt was recently dead ; Henry of Lancaster still
in exile ; the Percys had been driven over the border
into Scotland. All his enemies seemed to be crushed
or extinguished. With an army nearly as large as
before, and with vast supplies of stores and arms, he
landed at Waterford in 1399.

This time Art McMurrough quietly awaited his
coming in a wood not far from the landing-place. He
had only 3,000 men about him, s.o prudently declined
to be drawn from that safe retreat of the assailed.
The king and his army sat down on the outskirts of
the wood. It was July, but the weather was despe-
rately wet. The ground was in a swamp, the rain
incessant ; there was nothing but green oats for the
horses. The whole army suffered from damp and
exposure. Some labourers were hastily collected, and
an attempt made to cut down the wood. This, too,
as might be expected, proved a failure, and Richard,
in disgust and vexation, broke up his camp, and with
great difficulty, dragging his unwieldy army after him,
fell back upon Dublin.

The Leinster chief was not slow to avail himself of
the situation. He now took a high hand, and demanded
to be put in possession of certain lands he claimed

RICHARD'S RETURN TO ENGLAND. 123

through his wife, as well as to retain his chieftaincy.
A treaty was set on foot, varied by the despatch of a
flying column to scour his country. In the middle of
the negotiation startling news arrived. Henry of
Lancaster had landed at Ravenspur, and all England
was in arms. The king set off to return, but bad
weather and misleading counsel kept him another
sixteen days on Irish soil. It was a fatal sixteen
days. When he reached Milford Haven it was to find
the roads blocked, and to be met by the news that all
was lost. The army of Welshmen, gathered by Salis-
bury, had dispersed, finding that the king did not
arrive. His own army of 30,000 men caught the
panic, and melted equally rapidly. He tried to negotiate
with his cousin, but too late. At Chester he fell
into the hands of the victor, and, within a few weeks
after leaving Ireland, had passed to a prison, and from
there to a grave. He was the last English king to set
foot upon its soil until nearly exactly three centuries
later, when two rivals met to try conclusions upon the
same blood-stained arena.

From this out matters grew from bad to worse.
Little or no attempt was made to enforce the law save
within the ever-narrowing boundary of what. about
this time came to be known as the Pale. Outside,
Ireland grew to be more and more the Ireland of
the natives. Art McMurrough ruled over his
own country triumphantly till his death, and levied
tribute right and left with even-handed imparti-
ality upon his neighbours. " Black Rent," indeed,
began to take the form of a regularly recognized
tribute ; O'Neill receiving ,£40 a year from the

124 RICHARD II. IN IRELAND.

county of Louth, O'Connor of Offaly, £60 from
the county of Meath, and others in like proportion.
In despair of any assistance from England some of
the colonists formed themselves into a fraternity
which they called the " Brotherhood of St. George,"
consisting of some thirteen gentlemen of the Pale
with a hundred archers and a handful of horsemen
under them.

The Irish Government continued to pass Act after
Act, each more and more ferocious as it became more
and more ineffective. Colonists were now empowered
to take and behead any natives whom they found
marauding, or whom they even suspected of any such
intention. All friendly dealing with natives was to
be punished as felony. All who failed to shave
their upper lip at least once a fortnight were to be
imprisoned and their goods seized. Englishmen
who married Irish women were to be accounted guilty
of high treason, and hung, drawn, and quartered at
the convenience of the viceroy. Such feeble ferocity
tells its own tale. Like some angry shrew the un-
happy executive was getting louder and shriller the
less its denunciations were attended to.

XVIII.

THE DEEPEST DEPTHS.

THE most salient fact in Irish history is perhaps
its monotony. If that statement is a bull it is one
that must be forgiven for the sake of the truth it con-
veys. Year after year, decade after decade, century
after century, we seem to go swimming slowly and
wearily on through a vague sea of confusion and
disorder ; of brutal deeds and yet more brutal retali-
ations ; of misgovernment and anarchy ; of a confusion
so penetrating and all-persuasive that the mind fairly
refuses to grapple with it. Even killing — exciting as
an incident — becomes monotonous when it is con^
tinued adinfinitum,&n& no other occurrence ever comes
to vary its tediousness. Campion the Elizabethan
historian, whose few pages are a perfect magazine
of verbal quaintness, apologizes in the preface to his
"lovyng reader, for that from the time of Cambrensis
to that of Henry VIII." he is obliged to make short
work of his intermediable periods ; " because that
nothing is therein orderly written, and that the same
is time beyond any man's memory, wherefore I
scramble forward with such records as could be
sought up, and am enforced to be the briefer."

126 THE DEEPEST DEPTHS.

" Scrambling forward " is, indeed, exactly what de-
scribes the process. We, too, must be content " to
be the briefer," and to " scramble forward " across
these intermediate and comparatively eventless periods
in order to reach what lies beyond. The age of the
Wars of the Roses is one of great gloom and con-
fusion in England ; in Ireland it is an all but com-
plete blank. What intermittent interest in its
affairs had been awakened on the other side of the
channel had all but wholly died away in that pro-
tracted struggle. That its condition was miserable,
almost beyond conception, is all that we know for
certain. In England, although civil war was raging,
and the baronage were energetically slaughtering one
another, the mass of the people seem for the most
part to have gone unscathed. The townsfolk were
undisturbed ; the law was protected ; the law officers
went their rounds ; there seems even to have been
little general rapine and pillage. The Church, still
at its full strength, watched jealously over its own
rights and over the rights of those whom it pro-
tected. In Ireland, although there was nothing that
approached to the dignity of civil war, the condition
of the country seems to have been one of uninterrupted
and almost universal carnage, pillage, and rapine.
The baronage of the Pale raided upon the rest of the
country, and the rest of the country raided upon the
Pale. Even amongst churchmen it was much the
same. Although there was no religious dissension,
and heresy was unknown, the jealousy between the
churchmen of the two rival races, seems to have been
as deep as between the laymen, and their hatred of one

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 127

another probably even greater. As has been seen in
a former chapter, no priest or monk of Irish blood
was ever admitted into an English living or monastery,
and the rule appears to have been quite equally
applicable the other way.

The means, too, for keeping these discordant ele-
ments in check were ludicrously inefficient. The
whole military establishment during the greater part
of this century consisted of some 80 archers, and about
40 " spears ; " the whole revenue amounted to a few
hundred pounds per annum. The Parliament was a
small and irregular body of barons and knights of the
shires, with a few burgesses, unwillingly summoned
from the towns, and a certain number of bishops and
abbots, the latter, owing to the disturbed state of the
country, being generally represented by their proctors.
It was summoned at long intervals, and met some-
times in Dublin, sometimes in Drogheda, at other
times in Kilkenny, as occasion suggested. Even when
it did meet legislation was rarely attempted, and its
office was confined mainly to the voting of subsidies.
The country simply drifted at its own pleasure down
the road to ruin, and by the time the battle of
Bosworth was fought, the deepest depths of anarchy
had probably been sounded.

The seaport towns alone kept up some little
semblance of order and self-government, and seem
to have shown some slight capacity for self-defence.
In 1412, Waterford distinguished itself by the spirited
defence of its walls against the O'Driscolls, a piratical
clan of West Cork, and the following year sent a ship
into the enemy's stronghold of Baltimore, whose crew

128 THE DEEPEST DEPTHS.

seized upon the chief himself, his three brothers, his
son, his uncle, and his wife, and carried them off in
triumph to Waterford, a feat which the annals of the
town commemorate with laudable pride. Dublin, too,
showed a similar spirit, and fitted out some small
vessels which it sent on a marauding expedition to
Scotland, in reward for which its chief magistrate,
who had up to that time been a Provost, was invested
with the title of Mayor. " The king granted them
license," says Camden, "to choose every year a Mayor
and two baliffs." Also that its Mayor " should have a
gilt sword carried before him for ever."

Several eminent figures appear amongst the " ruck
of empty names " which fill up the list of fif-
teenth-century Irish viceroys. Most of these were
mere birds of passage, who made a few experiments
at government — conciliatory or the reverse, as the
case might be — and so departed again. Sir John
Talbot, the scourge of France, and antagonist of the
Maid of Orleans, was one of these. From all ac-
counts he seems to have quite kept up his character
in Ireland. The native writers speak of him as a
second Herod. The colonist detested him for his
exactions, while his soldiery were a scourge to every
district they were quartered upon. He rebuilt the
bridge of Athy, however, and fortified it so as to defend
that portion of the Pale, and succeeded in keeping
the O'Moores, O'Byrnes, and the rest of the native
marauders to some degree at bay.

In 1449, Richard, Duke of York, was sent to Ireland
upon a sort of honorary exile. He took the oppo-
site tack of conciliation. Although Ormond was a

RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK. 1 29

prominent member of the Lancastrian party, he at
once made gracious overtures to him. Desmond, too,
he won over by his courtesy, and upon the birth of
his son George — afterwards the luckless Duke of
Clarence — the rival earls acted as joint sponsors,
and when, in 1451, he left Ireland, he appointed
Ormond his deputy and representative.

Nine years later he came back, this time as a fugi-
tive. The popularity which he had already won stood
him then in good stead. Seizing upon the govern-
ment, he held it in the teeth of the king and Parlia-
ment for more than a year. The news of the battle
of Northampton tempted him to England. His
son, the Earl of March, had been victorious, and
Henry VI. was a prisoner. He was not destined,
however, to profit by the success of his own side. In
a temporary Lancastrian triumph he was" outnum-
bered, and killed by the troops of Queen Margaret at
Wakefield.

His Irish popularity descended to his son. A
considerable number of Irish Yorkist partisans, led
by the Earl of Kildare, fought beside the latter
at the decisive and sanguinary battle of Towton,
at which battle the rival Earl of Ormond, leader of
the Irish Lancastrians, was taken prisoner, beheaded
by the victors, and all his property attained, a blow
from which the Butlers were long in recovering.

No other great Irish house suffered seriously. In
England the older baronage were all but utterly swept
away by the Wars of the Roses, only a few here and
there surviving its carnage. In Ireland it was not so.
A certain number of Anglo-Norman names disappear

130 THE DEEPEST DEPTHS.

at this point from its annals, but the greater num-
ber of those with which the reader has become
familiar continue to be found in their now long-
established homes. The Desmonds and De Burghs
still reigned undisputed and unchallenged over their
several remote lordships. Ulster, indeed, had long
since become wholly Irish, but within the Pale the
minor barons of Norman descent — Fingals, Gorman-
stons, Dunsanys, Trimbelstons and others — remained
where their Norman fathers had established them-
selves, and where their descendants for the most part
may be found still. The house of Kildare had grown
in strength during the temporary collapse of its rival,
and from this out for nearly a century towers high
over every other Irish house. The Duke of York
was the last royal viceroy who actually held the
sword. Others, though nominated, never came over,
and in their absence the Kildares remained omnipo-
tent, generally as deputies, and even when that office
was for a while confided to other hands, their power
was hardly diminished. Only the barren title of Lord-
Lieutenant was withheld, and was as a rule bestowed
upon some royal personage, several times upon child-
ren, once in the case of Edward IV.'s son upon an
actual infant in arms.

In 1480, Gerald, eighth Earl of Kildare, called by
his own following, Geroit Mor, or Gerald the Great,
became deputy, and, from that time forward under
five successive kings, and during a period of 33 years,
he " reigned " with hardly an interval until his death
in 1513.

Geroit Mor is perhaps the most important chief

GEROIT MOR. 131

governor who ruled Ireland upon thorough-going
Irish principles. " A mighty man of stature, full of
honour and courage." Stanihurst describes him as
being "A knight in valour;" and "princely and
religious in his words and judgments " is the flatter-
ing report of the " Annals of the Four Masters."
" His name awed his enemies more than his army,''
says Camden. " The olde earle being soone hotte and
soone cold was of the Englishe well beloved," is
another report. "In hys warres hee used a retchlesse
(reckless) kynde of diligence, or headye careless-
nesse," is a less strong commendation, but probably
not less true.

He was a gallant man unquestionably, and as far
as can be seen an honest and a well-intentioned one,
but his policy was a purely personal, or at most a
provincial, one. As for the interests of the country
at large they seem hardly to have come within his
ken. That fashion of looking at the matter had now
so long been the established rule that it had probably-
ceased indeed to be regarded as a failing.

FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH.

XIX.

THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.

WHEN the Battle of Bosworth brought the adherents
of the Red Rose back to triumph, Gerald Mor was
still Lord-deputy. He was not deposed, however, on
that account, although the Butlers were at once rein-
stated in their own property, and Sir Thomas Butler
was created Earl of Ormond. According to a pre-
cedent now prevailing for several reigns, the Lord-
Lieutenancy was conferred upon the Duke of Bed-
ford, the king's uncle, Kildare continuing, however,
practically to exercise all the functions of govern-
ment as his deputy.

A dangerous plot, started by the discomfited
Yorkist faction, broke out in Ireland in 1487. An
impostor, named Lambert Simnel, was sent by the
Duchess of Burgundy, and trained to simulate the
son of Clarence who, it will be remembered, had been
born in Ireland, and whose son was therefore supposed
to have a special claim on that country. Two thou-
sand German mercenaries were sent with him to
support his pretensions.

This Lambert Simnel seems to have been a youth
of some talent, and to have filled his ugly im-

In the
Reign of Henry yil.

hfof,,Mi
English interspersed with

9 Longitude West 8 of Greenwich.

?34 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.

poster's role with as much grace as it admitted of
Bacon, in his history of the reign, tells us that
"he was a comely youth, not without some extra-
ordinary dignity of grace and aspect." The fashion
in which he retailed his sufferings, pleaded his youth,
and appealed to the proverbial generosity of the Irish
people, to protect a hapless prince, robbed of his
throne and his birthright, seems to have produced
an immense effect. Kildare, there is reason to
suspect, was privy to the plot, but of others there is
no reason to think this, and with a single exception —
that of the Earl of Howth— all the lords of the Pale
and many of the bishops, including the Archbishop of
Dublin, seem to have welcomed the lad — he was only
fifteen — with the utmost enthusiasm, an enthusiasm
which Henry's production of the real son of Clarence
had no effect at all in diminishing.

Lambert Simnel was conducted in high state to
Dublin, and there crowned in the presence of the
Earl of Kildare, the chancellor, and other State officers.
The crown used for the purpose was taken off the
head of a statue of The Virgin in St. Mary's Abbey,
and — a quainter piece of ceremonial still — the youth-
ful monarch was, after the ' ceremony, hoisted upon
the shoulders of the tallest man in Ireland, " Great
Darcy of Flatten," and, in this position, promenaded
through the streets of Dublin so as to be seen by the
people, after which he was taken back in triumph to
the castle.

His triumph was not, however, long-lived. Em-
boldened by this preliminary success, his partizans
took him across the sea and landed with a considerable

DEFEAT OF SIMNEL. 135

force at Fondray, in Lancashire, the principal leaders
on this occasion being the Earl of Lincoln, Thomas
Fitzgerald, brother to the Earl of Kildare, Lord
Lbvell, and Martin Schwartz, the commander of the
German forces.

The enthusiasm that was expected to break out
on their arrival failed however to come off. " Their
snowballs," as Bacon puts it, " did not gather as
they went." A battle was fought at Stoke, at
which 4,000 of the rebels fell, including Thomas Fitz-
gerald, the Earl of Lincoln, and the German general
Martin Schwartz, while Lambert Simnel with his
tutor, Simon the priest, fell into the king's hands, who
spared their lives, and appointed the former to the
office of turnspit, an office which he held for a
number of years, being eventually promoted to that
of falconer, and as guardian of the king's hawks he
lived and died.

He was not the only culprit whom Henry was
willing to pardon. Clemency indeed was his strong
point, and he extended it without stint again and
again to his Irish rebels. He despatched Sir Richard
Edgecombe, a member of the royal household*
shortly afterwards upon a mission of conciliation
to Ireland. The royal pardon was to be extended to
Kildare and the rest of the insurgents on condition
of their submission. Kildare's pride stood out for a
while against submission on any conditions, but the
Royal Commissioner was firm, and the terms, easy ones
it must be owned, were at last accepted, and an oath
of allegiance sworn to. Kildare, thereupon, was con-
firmed in his deputyship, and Sir Richard Edgecombe

136 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.

having first partaken of "much excellent good cheere"
at the earl's castle at Maynooth, returned peaceably
to England.

The Irish primate, one of the few ecclesiastics
who had refused to support the impostor, was then,
as it happened, in London, and placed strongly before
the king the impolicy of continuing Kildare in
office. Apparently his remonstrance had its effect,
for Henry issued a summons to the deputy and
all the Irish nobility to attend at Court, one which
was obeyed with hardly an exception. A dramatic
turn is given to this visit by the fact that Lambert
Simnel, the recently crowned king, was promoted for
the occasion to serve wine at dinner to his late Irish
subjects. The poor scullion did his office with what
grace he might, but no one, it is said, would touch the
wine until it came to the turn of the Earl of Howth,
the one Irish peer, as we have seen, who had declined
to accept the impostor in his heyday of success. "Nay,
but bring me the cup if the wine be good," quoth he,
being a merry gentleman, " and I shall drink it both
for its sake and mine own, and for thee also as thou
art, so I leave thee, a poor innocent ! "

Howth, whose speech is recorded by his own family
chronicler, received three hundred pounds as a reward
for his loyalty, the rest returned as they came, lucky,
they must have felt under the circumstances, in
returning at all.

Simnel was not the last Yorkist impostor who
found credit and an asylum in Ireland. Peterkin,
or Perkin Warbeck was the next whom the inde-
fatigable Duchess of Burgundy started on the same

PERKIN WARBECK. 137

stage and upon the same errand. This time the prince
supposed to be personated was the youngest son
of Edward IV., one of the two princes murdered in
the tower. He is also occasionally spoken of as a
son of Clarence, and sometimes as an illegitimate son
of Richard III. — any royal personage, in fact, whose
age happened to suit. In spite of the slight ambiguity
which overhung his princely origin, he was received
with high honour in Cork, and having appealed to the
Earls of Desmond and Kildare, was accepted by the
former with open arms. "You Irish would crown
apes ! " Henry afterwards said, not indeed unwar-
rantably. This time Kildare was more cautious*
though his brother, Sir James Fitzgerald, warmly
espoused the cause of the impostor. Perkin War-
beck remained in Ireland about a year, when he was
invited to France and, for a while, became the centre
of the disaffected Yorkists there. He was a very poor
specimen of the genus impostor, and seems even to
have been destitute of the commonplace quality of
courage.

In spite of the unusual prudence displayed by him
on this occasion, Kildare was, in 1497, removed
from the deputyship, which was for a time vested
in Walter Fitzsimons, Archbishop of Dublin, a declared
enemy of the Geraldines. Sir James Ormond who
represented his brother, the earl, was appointed Lord
Treasurer in place of the Baron of Portlester, Kildare's
uncle, who had held the office for thirty-eight years.
Fresh quarrels thereupon broke out between the Butlers
and the rival house, and each harassed the lands of
the other in the usual approved style. A meeting was

138 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.

at last arranged to take place in St. Patrick's Cathe-
dral between the two leaders, but a riot breaking out
Sir James barred himself up in alarm in the Chapter
House. Kildare arriving at the door with offers of
peace, a hole had to be cut to enable the two to com-
municate. Sir James fearing treachery declined to put
out his hand, whereupon Kildare boldly thrust in his,
and the rivals shook hands. The door was then
opened ; they embraced, and for a while peace was
patched up. The door, with the hole still in it, was
extant up to the other day.

The quarrels between these two great houses were
interminable, and kept the whole Pale and the greater
part of Ireland in eternal hot water. Their war-
cries of " Crom-a-Boo " and " Butler-a-Boo " filled the
very air, and had to be solemnly prohibited a few years
later by special Act of Parliament. By 1494 the
complaints against Kildare had grown so loud and so
long that the king resolved upon a new experiment,
that of sending over an Englishman to fill the post,
and Sir Edward Poynings was pitched upon as the
most suitable for the purpose.

He arrived accompanied by a force of a thousand
men-at-arms, and five or six English lawyers, who
were appointed to fill the places of chancello^
treasurer, and other offices from which the present
occupiers, most of whom had been concerned either
in the Warbeck or Simnel rising, were to be ejected.

It was at a parliament summoned at Drogheda,
whither this new deputy had gone to quell a northern
rising, that the famous statute known as Poynings'
Act was passed, long a rock of offence, and even

POYNINGS* ACT — KILDARE IN ENGLAND. 139

still a prominent feature in Irish political contro-
versy.

Many of the statutes passed by this Parliament —
such as the one just mentioned forbidding war cries,
others forbidding the levying of private forces, for-
bidding the " country's curse " Coyne and livery, and
other habitual exactions were undoubtedly necessary
and called for by the circumstances of the case.
The only ones now remembered however are the
following. First, that no parliament should be sum-
moned by the deputy's authority without the king's
special license for that purpose. Secondly, that all
English statutes should henceforward be regarded
as binding upon Ireland ; and thirdly, that all Acts
referring to Ireland must be submitted first to the
king and Privy Council, and that, when returned by
them, the Irish Parliament should have no power to
modify them further. This, as will be seen, practically
reduced the latter to a mere court for registering
laws already passed elsewhere, passed too often
without the smallest regard to the special require-
ments of the country. A condition of subserviency
from which it only escaped again for a short time
during the palmy days of the eighteenth century.

By this same parliament Kildare was attained —
rather late in the day — on the ground of conspiracy,
and sent prisoner to London. He lay a year in
prison, and was then brought to trial, and allowed to
plead his own cause in the king's presence. The
audacity, frank humour, and ready repartee of his
great Irish subject seems to have made a favourable
impression upon Henry, who must himself have had

140 THE K1LDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.

more sense of humour than English historians give
us any impression of. One of the principal charges
against the earl was that he had burned the church
at Cashel. According to the account given in the
Book of Howth he readily admitted the charge, but
declared positively that he would never have thought
of doing so had he not been solemnly assured that
the archbishop was at the time inside it. The auda-
city of this defence is not a little heightened by
the fact that the archbishop in question was at the
moment sitting in court and listening to it.

Advised by the king to provide himself with a good
counsel, " By St. Bride " — his favourite oath — said he,
" I know well the fellow I would have, yea, and the
best in England, too ! " Asked who that might be.
"Marry, the king himself." The note of comedy
struck at the beginning of the trial lasted to the end.
The earl's ready wit seems to have dumbfounded his
accusers, who were not unnaturally indignant at so
unlocked for a result. " All Ireland," they swore,
solemnly, "could not govern the Earl of Kildare."
" So it appears," said Henry. " Then let the Earl of
Kildare govern all Ireland."

Whether the account given by Irish historians of
this famous trial is to be accepted literally or not, the
result, at any rate, was conclusive. The king seems to
have felt, that Kildare was less dangerous as sheep-dog
— even though a head-strong one — than as wolf, even
a wolf in a cage. He released him and restored him
to his command. Prince Henry, according to custom,
becoming nominally Lord-Lieutenant, with Kildare as
deputy under him. The earl's wife had lately died,

RETURN OF KILDARE TO IRELAND. 141

and before leaving England he strengthened himself
against troubles to come by marrying Elizabeth St
John, the king's cousin, and having left his son Gerald
behind as hostage for his good behaviour, sailed
merrily home to Ireland.

Perkin Warbeck meanwhile had made another
foray upon Munster, where he was supported by
Desmond, and repulsed with no little ignominy by
the townsfolk of Waterford ; after which he again
departed and was seen no more upon that stage.
Kildare — whose own attainder was not reversed until
after his arrival in Ireland — presided over a parlia-
ment, one of whose first acts was to attaint Lord
Barrymore and the other Munster gentlemen for their
share in this rising. He also visited Cork and Kin-
sale, leaving a garrison behind him ; rebuilt several
towns in Leinster which had been ruined in a succes-
sion of raids ; garrisoned the borders of the Pale
with new castles, and for the first time in its
history brought ordnance into Ireland, which he
employed in the siege of Belrath Castle. A -factor
destined to work a revolution upon Irish traditional
modes of warfare, and upon none with more fatal
effect than upon the house of Fitzgerald itself.

That Kildare's authority, even during this latter
period of his government was wholly exercised in
the cause of tranquility it would be certainly rash to
assert. At the same time it may be doubted whether
any better choice was open to the king — short of
some very drastic policy indeed. That he used his
great authority to overthrow his own enemies and to
aggrandize his own house goes almost without saying

142 THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.

The titular sovereignty of the king could hope to count
for little beside the real sovereignty of the earl, and
the house of Kildare naturally loomed far larger and
more imposingly in Ireland than the house of Tudor.
Despotism in some form was the only practical and
possible government, and Earl Gerald was all but
despotic within the Pale, and even outside it was at
any rate stronger than any other single individual.
The Desmond Geraldines lived remote, the Butlers,
who came next to the Geraldines in importance, held
Kilkenny, Carlow, and Tipperary, but were cut off
from Dublin by the wild mountains of Wicklow, and
the wilder tribes of O'Tooles, and O'Brynes who held
them. They were only able to approach it through
Kildare, and Kildare was the head-quarters of the
Geraldines.

One of Earl Gerald's last, and, upon the whole, his
most remarkable achievement was that famous expedii
tion which ended in the battle of Knocktow already
alluded to in an earlier chapter, in which a large num-
ber of the lords of the Pale, aided by the native allies
of the deputy, took part. In this case there was
hardly a pretence that the expedition was undertaken
in the king's service. It was a family quarrel pure
and simple, between the deputy and his son-in-law
McWilliam, of Clanricarde. The native account
tells us that the latter's wife " was not so used as the
earl (her father) could be pleased with," whereupon
" he swore to be revenged upon this Irishman and all
his partakers." The notion of a Fitzgerald stigma-
tizing a De Burgh as an Irishman is delightful, and
eminently characteristic of the sort of wild confusion

BATTLE OF KNOCKTOW. 143

prevailing on the subject. The whole story indeed
is so excellent, and is told by the narrator with so
much spirit, that it were pity to curtail it, and as it
stands it would be too long for these pages. The
result was that Clanricarde and his Irish allies were
defeated with frightful slaughter, between seven and
eight thousand men, according to the victors, having
been left dead upon the field ! Galway, previously
held by Clanricarde, was re-occupied, and the deputy
and his allies returned in triumph to Dublin, whence
the archbishop was despatched in hot haste to explain
matters to the king.

A slight incident which took place at the end of
this battle is too characteristic to omit " We have
done one good work," observed Lord Gorman-
ston, one of the Lords of the Pale, confidentially to
the Lord-deputy. " And if we now do the other we
shall do well." Asked by the latter what he meant,
he replied, "We have for the most part killed our
enemies, if we do the like with all the Irishmen that
we have with us it were a good deed." x Happily for
his good fame Kildare seems to have been able to
resist the tempting suggestion, and the allies parted
on this occasion to all appearances on friendly terms.

1 Book of Howth.

XX,

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.

THE battle of Knocktow was fought five years
before the death of Henry VII. Of those five years
and of the earlier ones of the new reign little
of any vital importance remains to be recorded
in Ireland. With the rise of Wolsey to power how-
ever a new era set in. The great cardinal was the
sworn enemy of the Geraldines. He saw in them
the most formidable obstacle to the royal power in
that country. The theory that the Kildares were
the only people who could carry on the government
had by this time become firmly established. No
one in Ireland could stand against the earl, and when
the earl was out of Ireland the whole island was in an
uproar. The confusion too between Kildare in his
proper person, and Kildare as the king's Viceroy was,
it must be owned, a perennial one, and upon more
than one occasion had all but brought the govern-
ment to an absolute standstill.

Geroit Mor had died in 1513 of a wound received
in a campaign with the O'Carrolls close to his own
castle of Kilkea, but almost as a matter of course his son
Gerald had succeeded him as Viceroy and carried on

PLAN OF THE EARL OF SURREY. 145

the government in much the same fashion ; had made
raids on the O'Moores and O'Reillys and others of the
" king's Irish enemies," and been rewarded with grants
upon the lands which he had captured from the rebels.
The state of the Pale was terrible. " Coyne and
livery," it was declared, had eaten up the people.
The sea, too, swarmed with pirates, who descended
all but unchecked upon the coast and carried off men
and women to slavery. Many complaints were made
of the deputy, and by 1520 these had grown so
loud and long that Henry resolved upon a change,
and like his predecessor determined to send an
English governor, one upon whom he could himself
rely.

The choice fell upon the Earl of Surrey, son of the
conqueror of Flodden. Surrey's survey of the field
soon convinced him to his own satisfaction that no
half measures was likely to be of any avail. The
plan proposed by him had certainly the merit of
being sufficiently sweeping. Ireland was to be entirely
reconquered. District was to be taken after district,
and fortresses to be built to hold them according as
they were conquered. The occupation was thus to
be pushed steadily on until the whole country sub-
mitted, after which it was to be largely repopulated
by English colonists. The idea was a large one, and
would have taken a large permanent army to carry
out. The loss too of life would have been appalling,
though not, it was represented to the king, greater than
was annually squandered in an interminable succession
of petty wars. Probably the expense was the real hin-
drance. At any rate Surrey's plan was put aside for

146 FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.

the time being, and not long afterwards at his own
urgent prayer he was allowed to lay down his uneasy
honours and return to England.

Meanwhile Earl Gerald the younger had been
rapidly gaining favour at Court, had accompanied
Henry to France, and like his father before him, had
wooed and won an English bride. Like his father,
too, he possessed that winning charm which had
for generations characterized his house. Quick-
witted and genial, with the bright manner and cour-
teous ease of high-bred gentlemen, such — even on
the showing of those who had no love for them — was
the habitual bearing of these Leinster Geraldines.
The end was that Kildare after a while was allowed
to return to Ireland, and upon Surrey's departure,
and after a brief and very unsuccessful tenure of
office by Sir Pierce Butler, the deputyship was re-
stored to him.

Three years later he was again summoned, and this
time, on Wolsey's urgent advice, thrown into the
Tower. Heavy accusations had been made against
him, the most formidable of which was that he had
used the king's ordnance to strengthen his own castle
of Maynooth. The Ormonds and the cardinal
were bent upon his ruin. The earl, however, faced his
accusers boldly ; met even the great cardinal himself
in a war of words, and proved to be more than his
equal. Once again he was acquitted and restored to
Ireland, and after a while the deputyship was
restored to him, John Allen, a former chaplain of
Wolsey's, being however appointed Archbishop of
Dublin, and Chancellor, with private orders to keep a

DEATH OF KILDARE. 147

watch upon Kildare, and to report his proceedings to
the English Council.

Yet a third time in 1534 he was summoned, and
now the case was more serious. The whole situa-
tion had in fact in the meanwhile utterly changed,
Henry was now in the thick of his great struggle
with Rome. With excommunication hanging over
his head, Ireland had suddenly become a formid-
able peril. Fears were entertained of a Spanish
descent upon its coast. One of the emperor's
chaplains was known to be intriguing with the Earl
of Desmond. Cromwell's iron hand too was over
the realm and speedily made itself felt in Ireland.
Kildare was once more thrown into the Tower, from
which this time he was never destined to emerge. He
was ill already of a wound received the previous year,
arid the confinement and trouble of mind — which
before long became acute — brought his life to a close.

His son Thomas — generally known as Silken
Thomas from the splendour of his clothes — had been
rashly appointed vice-deputy by his father before his
departure. In the month of August, a report reached
Ireland that the earl had been executed, and the
whole house of Geraldine was forthwith thrown into
the wildest convulsions of fury at the intelligence.
Young Lord Thomas — he was only at the time
twenty-one — hot-tempered, undisciplined, and brimful
of the pride of his race — at once flew to arms. His
first act was to renounce his allegiance to England.
Galloping up to the Council with a hundred and
fifty Geraldines at his heels, he seized the Sword of
State, marched into the council-room, and addressing

148 FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.

the Council in his capacity of Vice-deputy, poured
forth a speech full of boyish fanfaronade and bravado.
" Henceforth," said he, "I am none of Henry's deputy!
I am his foe! I have more mind to meet him in
the field, than to serve him in office." With other
words to the like effect he rendered up the Sword, and
once more springing upon his horse, galloped out of
Dublin.

He was back again before long, this time with
intent to seize the town. There was little or no
defence. Ormond was away; the walls were decayed;
ordnance was short — a good deal of it, the Geraldine
enemies said, had been already removed to May-
nooth. White, the commander, threw himself into
the castle ; the gates were opened ; Lord Thomas
cantered in and took possession of the town, the
garrison remaining placidly looking on.

Worse was to come. Allen, the archbishop, and
the great enemy of the Fitzgeralds made an attempt
to escape to England, but was caught and savagely
murdered by some of the Geraldine adherents upon
the sea coast near Clontarf. When the news of
these proceedings — especially of the last named —
reached England, the sensation naturally was immense.
Henry hastily despatched Sir William Skeffington with
a considerable force to restore order, but his coming
was long delayed, and when he did arrive his opera-
tions were feeble in the extreme. Ormond had
marched rapidly up from the south, and almost
singlehanded defended the interests of government.
Even after his arrival Skeffington, who was old,
cautious, and enfeebled by bad health, remained for

CAPTURE OF MAYNOOTH BY THE ENGLISH. 149

months shut up in Dublin doing nothing, the followers
of Lord Thomas wasting the country at pleasure, and
burning the towns of Trim and Dunboyne, not many
miles from its walls.

The Earl of Kildare had meanwhile died in prison,
broken-hearted at the news of this ill-starred rising, in
which he doubtless foresaw the ruin of his house. It
was not until the month of March, eight months after
his arrival in Ireland, that Sir William ventured to
leave Dublin, and advance to the attack of Maynooth
Castle, the great Leinster stronghold and Paladium of
the Geraldines. Young Kildare, as he now was, was
away in the south, but managed to throw some
additional men into the castle, which was already
strongly fortified, and believed in Ireland to be
impregnable. The siege train imported by the
deputy shortly dispelled that illusion. Whether, as
is asserted, treachery from within aided the result or
not, the end was not long delayed. After a few
days Skeffington's cannons made a formidable breach
in the walls. The English soldiery rushed in. The
defenders threw down their arms and begged mercy,
and a long row of them, including the Dean of
Kildare and another priest who happened to be in
the castle at the time were speedily hanging in front
of its walls. " The Pardon of Maynooth " was from
that day forth a well-known Irish equivalent for the
gallows !

This was the end of the rebellion. The destruction
of Maynooth Castle seems to have struck a cold chill
to the very hearts of the Geraldines. For a while,
Earl Thomas and his brother-in-law, the chief of the

PALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.

O'Connors, tried vainly to sustain the spirits of their
followers. The rising seems to have melted away
almost of its own accord, and within a few months
the young leader himself surrendered to Lord Leonard
Grey, the English commander, upon the understand-
ing that his life was to be spared. Lord Leonard was
his near relative, and therefore no doubt willing, as
far as was compatible with safety to himself, to do the
best he could for his kinsman. Whether a promise was
formally given, or whether as was afterwards asserted
"comfortable words were spoken to Thomas to allure
him to yield " the situation was considered too grave
for any mere fanciful consideration of honour to stand
in the way. Lord Thomas was not executed upon
the spot, but he was thrown into prison, and a year
later with five of his uncles, two of whom at least had
had no share whatever in the raising, he was hanged
at Tyburn. Of all the great house of the Leinster
Geraldines only a boy of twelve years old survived
this hecatomb.

FIGURES ON KILCARN FONT, MEATH.

XXI.

THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.

IN spite of his feeble health and feebler energies,
Sir William Skeffington was continued Lord-deputy
until his death, which took place not many months after
the fall of Maynooth — " A good man of war, but not
quick enough for Ireland " — seems to have been the
verdict of his contemporaries upon him. He was
succeeded by Lord Leonard Grey, against whom
no such charge could be made. His energy seems to
have been immense. He loved, we are told, to be
" ever in the saddle." Such was the rapidity of his
movements, and such the terror they inspired that for
a while a sort of awe-struck tranquillity prevailed. He
overran Cork ; broke down the castles of the Barrys
and Munster Geraldines; destroyed the famous bridge
over the Shannon across which the O'Briens of Clare
had been in the habit of descending from time imme-
morial upon the Pale, and after these various achieve-
ments returned triumphantly to Dublin.

His Geraldine connection proved however his ruin.
He was- accused of favouring the adherents of their
fallen house, and even of conniving at the escape of
its last legitimate heir ; of playing " Bo Peep " with

152 THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.

him, as Stanihurst, the historian puts it. Ormond
and the deputy were never friends, and Ormond had
won — not undeservedly — great weight in the councils
of Henry. "My Lord-deputy," Lord Butler, Or-
mond's son had declared, " is the Earl of Kildare
born over again." Luttrell, on the other hand, de-
clared that " Ormond hated Grey worse than he had
hated Kildare." All agreed that Lord Leonard was
difficult to work with. He seems to have been a well-
intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keen soldier,
but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough
for his place. He was accused of treasonable
practices, and a list of formidable charges made
against him. At his own request he was summoned
to court to answer these. To a good many he
pleaded guilty — half in contempt as it would seem —
and threw himself upon the mercy of the king. No
mercy however followed. Like many another " well-
meaning English official" of the period, his life ended
upon the scaffold.

A more astute and cautious man, Sir Anthony St
Leger, next took the helm in Ireland. His task was
chiefly one of diplomacy, and he carried it out with
much address. In 1537 a parliament had been sum-
moned in Dublin for the purpose of carrying out the
Act of Supremacy. To this proposal the lay members
seem to have been perfectly indifferent, but, as was to
be expected, the clergy stood firmer. So resolute
were they in their opposition that the parliament had
to be prorogued, and upon its re-assembling, a Bill was
hastily forced through by the Privy Council, declaring
that the proctors, who had long represented the clergy

CONFISCATION OF THE MONASTERIES. 153

in the Lower House, had henceforward no place in
the Legislature. The Act of Supremacy was then
passed : thirteen abbeys were immediately suppressed,
and the firstfruits made over to the king in place
of the Pope. The foundation of the new edifice was
felt to have been securely laid.

This was followed five years later by another Act, by
which the property of over four hundred religious
houses was confiscated. That the arguments which
applied forcibly enough in many cases for the con-
fiscations of religious houses in England 'had no
application in Ireland, was a circumstance which was
not allowed to count. In England, the monasteries
were rich ; in Ireland, they were, for the most part,
very poor : in England, they absorbed the revenues of
the parishes ; in Ireland, the monks as a rule served
the parishes themselves : in England, popular condem-
nation had to a great degree already forestalled the
legal enactment ; in Ireland, nothing of the sort had
ever been thought of : in England, the monks were
as a rule distinctly behind the higher orders of laity
in education ; in Ireland, they were practically the
only educators. These however were details. Uni-
formity was desirable. The monasteries were doomed,
and before long means were found to enlist most of
the Irish landowners, Celts no less than Normans, in
favour of the despoliation.

At a great parliament summoned in Dublin in
1540, all the Irish lords of English descent, and
a large muster of native chieftains were for the
first time in history assembled together under one
roof. O'Tooles and O'Byrnes from their wild Wick-

154 THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.

low mountains ; the McMurroughs from Carlow, the
O'Connor, the O'Dunn, the O'Moore ; the terrible
McGillapatrick from his forests of Upper Ossory —
all the great O's and Macs in fact of Ireland were
called together to meet the Butlers, the Desmonds,
the Barrys, the Fitzmaurices — their hereditary enemies
now for four long centuries. One house alone was not
represented, and that the greatest of them all. The
sun of the Kildares had set for a while, and the only
surviving member of it was a boy, hiding in holes
and corners, and trusting for the bare life to the fealty
of his clansmen.

Nothing that could reconcile the chiefs to the new
religious departure was omitted upon this occasion.
Their new-found loyalty was to be handsomely re-
warded with a share of the Church spoil. Nor did
they show the smallest reluctance, it must be said, to
meet the king's good dispositions half way. The
principal Church lands in Galway were made over
to McWilliam, the head of the Burkes ; O'Brien
received the abbey lands in Thomond ; other chiefs
received similar benefices according to their degree,
while a plentiful shower of less substantial, but still
appreciated favours followed. The turbulent Mc-
Gillapatrick of Ossory was to be converted into the
decorous-sounding Lord Upper Ossory. For Con
O'Neill as soon as he chose to come in, the Earldom
of Tyrone was waiting. McWilliam Burke of Galway
was to become Earl of Clanricarde ; O'Brien of Clare,
Earl of Thomond and Baron of Inchiquin. Parlia-
mentary robes, and golden chains ; a house in Dublin
for each chief during the sitting of Parliament — these

DISTRIBUTION OF CHURCH LANDS.

155

were only a portion of the good things offered by the
deputy on the part of his master. Could man or
monarch do. more ? In a general interchange of
civilities the " King's Irish enemies " combined with
their hereditary foes to proclaim him no longer Lord,
but King of Ireland — " Defender of the Faith, and of
the Church of England and Ireland on earth the
Supreme Head."

FONT IN KILCARN CHURCH, CO. MEATH.

XXII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE.

So far so good. Despite a few trifling clouds which
overhung the horizon, the latter years of Henry VIII.'s
life and the short reign of his successor may claim
to count among the comparatively halcyon periods of
Irish history. The agreement with the landowners
worked well, and no serious fears of any purpose to
expel them from their lands had as yet been awakened.
Henry's policy was upon the whole steadily concilia-
tory. Tyrant as he was, he could be just when his
temper was not roused, and he kept his word loyally
in this case. To be just and firm, and to give time
for those hitherto untried varieties of government to
work, was at once the most merciful and most politic
course that could be pursued. Unfortunately for the
destinies of Ireland, unfortunately for the future com-
fort of her rulers, there was too little patience to
persevere in that direction. The Government desired
to eat their loaf before there was fairly time for the
corn to sprout The seed of conciliation had hardly
begun to grow before it was plucked hastily up by the
roots again. The plantations of Mary's reign, and
the still larger operations carried on in that of her

NEW IRISH PEERS.

sister, awakened a deep-seated feeling of distrust, a
rooted belief in the law as a mysterious and incom-
prehensible instrument invented solely for the per-
petration of injustice, a belief which is certainly not
wholly extinguished even in our own day.

For the present, however, " sober ways, politic
shifts, and amicable persuasions " were the rule.
Chief after chief accepted the indenture which made
him owner in fee simple under the king of his tribal
lands. These indentures, it is true, were in themselves
unjust, but then it was not as it happened a form of
injustice that affected them unpleasantly. Con O'Neill,
Murrough O'Brien, McWilliam of Clanricarde, all
visited Greenwich in the summer of 1543, and all
received their peerages direct from the king's own
hands. The first named, as became his importance,
was received with special honour, and received the title
of Earl of Tyrone, with the second title of Baron of
Dungannon for any son whom he liked to name. The
son whom he did name — apparently in a fit of inadvert-
ence— was one Matthew, who is confidently asserted to
have not been his son at all, but the son of a black-
smith, and who in any case was not legitimate. An
odd choice, destined, as will be seen, to lead to a
good deal of bloodshed later on.

One or two of the new peers were even per-
suaded to send over their heirs to be brought up
at the English. Court, according to a gracious hint
from the king. Young Barnabie FitzPatrick, heir to
the new barony of Upper Ossory, was one of these,
and the descendent of a long line of turbulent Me
Gillapatricks, grew up there into a douce-mannered

158 THE NEW DEPARTURE.

English-seeming youth, the especial friend and chosen
companion of the mild young prince.

While civil strife was thus settling down, religious
strife unfortunately was only beginning to awaken.
The question of supremacy had passed over as we
have seen in perfect tranquillity ; it was a very dif-
ferent matter when it came to a question of doctrine.
Unlike England, Ireland had never been touched by
religious controversy. The native Church and the
Church of the Pale were sharply separated from one
another it is true, but it was by blood, language, and
mutual jealousies, not by creed, doctrine, or discipline.
As regards these points they were all but absolutely
identical. The attempt to change their common faith
was instantly and vehemently resisted by both alike.
Could a Luther or a John Knox have arrived, with all
the fervour of their popular eloquence, the case might
possibly have been different. No Knox or Luther
however, showed the slightest symptom of appearing,
indeed hardly an attempt was made to supply doctrines
to the new converts. The few English divines that
did come knew no Irish, those who listened to them
knew no English. The native priests were silent and.
auspicious. A general pause of astonishment and
consternation prevailed.

The order for the destruction of relics broke this
silence, and sent a passionate thrill of opposition
through all breasts, lay as well as clerical. When
the venerated remains of the golden days of the
Irish Church were collected together and publicly
destroyed, especially when the staff of St. Patrick,
the famous Baculum Cristatum, part of which was

OUTBREAK OF RELIGIOUS STRIFE. 159

believed to have actually touched the hands of the
Saviour, was burnt in Dublin in the market-place,
a spasm of shocked dismay ran through the whole
island. Men who would have been scandalized
by no other form of violence were horror-stricken
at this. Differences of creed were so little under-
stood that a widespread belief that a new era of
paganism was about to be inaugurated sprang up all
over Ireland. To this belief the friars, who, though
driven from their cloisters, were still numerous, lent
their support, as did the Jesuits, who now for the
first time began to arrive in some numbers. Even
the acceptance of the supremacy began to be rebelled
against now that it was clearly seen what it was lead-
ing to. An order to read the new English liturgy
was met with sullen resistance — " Now shall every
illiterate fellow read mass ! " cried Archbishop Dowdal
of Armagh, in hot wrath and indignation. Brown, the
Archbishop of Dublin, was an ardent reformer, so
also was the Bishop of Meath, but to the mass of their
brethren they simply appeared to be heretics. A
proposal was made to translate the Prayer-book into
Irish, but it was never carried into effect, indeed,
even in the next century when Bishop Bedell pro-
posed to undertake the task he received little en-
couragement.

The attempt to force Protestantism upon the
country produced one, and only one, important result.
It broke down those long-standing barriers which had
hitherto separated Irishmen of different blood and
lineage, and united them like one man against the
Crown. When the common faith was touched the

i6o

THE NEW DEPARTURE.

common sense of brotherhood was kindled. " The
English and Irish," Archbishop Brown wrote in despair
to Cromwell, "both oppose your lordship's orders, and
begin to lay aside their own quarrels." Such a result
might be desirable in itself, but it certainly came in the
form least likely to prove propitious for the futuos
tranquillity of the country. Even those towns where
loyalty had hitherto stood above suspicion received
the order to dismantle their churches and destroy
all " pictures and Popish fancies " with sullen
dislike and hostility. Galway, Kilkenny, Waterford,
each and all protested openly. The Irish problem —
not so very easy of solution before — had suddenly
received a new element of confusion. One that was
destined to prove a greater difficulty than all the rest
put together.

INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS.

XXIII.

THE FIRST PLANTATIONS.

WITH Mary's accession the religious struggle was
for a while postponed. Some feeble attempts were
even made to recover the Church property, but too
many people's interests were concerned for much to
be done in that direction. Dowdal, Archbishop of
Armagh, who had been deprived, was restored to his
primacy. Archbishop Brown and the other confor-
ming bishops were deprived. So also were all married
clergy, of whom there seem to have been but few ;
otherwise there was no great difference. As far as
the right of exercising her supremacy was concerned,
Mary relished Papal interference nearly as little as
did her father.

Although the religious struggle was thus for a time
postponed, the other vital Irish point — the possession
of the land — now began to be pressed with new
vigour. Fercal, Leix, and Offaly, belonging to the
fierce tribes of the O'Moores, O'Dempseys, O'Connors,
and O'Carrols, lay upon the Kildare frontier of the
Pale, and had long been a standing menace to their
more peaceful neighbours. It was now determined
that this tract should be added to the still limited

162 THE FIRST PLANTATIONS.

area of shire land. The chiefs, it is true, had been
indentured by Henry, but since then there had been
outbreaks of the usual sort, and it was considered
by the Government that nowhere could the longed-for
experiment of a plantation be tried with greater
advantage.

There was little or no resistance. The chiefs, taken
by surprise, submitted. The English force sent
against them, under the command of Sir Edward
Bellingham, was irresistible. O'Moore and O'Connor
were seized and sent prisoners to England. Dangen,
which had so often resisted the soldiers of the Pale
was taken. The tribesmen whose fathers had fed
their cattle from time immemorial upon the un-
fenced pastures of the plains were driven off, and
took refuge in the forests, which still covered most
of the centre of Ireland. The more profitable land
was then leased by the Crown to English colonists
— Cosbies, Barringtons, Pigotts, Bowens, and others.
Leix and a portion of Offaly were called Queen's
County, in compliment to the queen, the remainder
King's County, in compliment to Philip. Dangen at
the same time becoming Phillipstown, and Campa
Maryborough. The experiment was regarded as
eminently successful, and congratulations passed be-
tween the deputy and the English Council, but
it awakened a deep-seated sense of insecurity and
ill-usage, which argued poorly for the tranquillity of
the future.

Of the rest of Mary's reign little needs to be here
recorded. That indelible brand of blood which it has
left on English history was all but unfelt in Ireland.

DEATH OF MARY. 163

There had been few Protestant converts, and those
few were not apparently emulous of martyrdom.
No Smithfield fires were lighted in Dublin, indeed
it is a curious fact that in the whole course of Irish
history — so prodigal of other horrors — no single exe-
cution for heresy is, it is said, recorded. A story is
found in the Ware Papers, and supported by the
authority of Archbishop Ussher, which, if true, shows
that this reproach to Irish Protestantism — if indeed it
is a reproach — was once nearly avoided. The story
runs that one Cole, Dean of St Paul's, was despatched
by Mary with a special commission to "lash the
heretics of Ireland." That Cole slept on his way
at an inn in Chester, the landlady of which happened
to have a brother, a Protestant then living in Dublin.
This woman, hearing him boast of his commission,
watched her opportunity, and stole the commission
out of his cloak-bag, substituting for it a pack of
cards. Cole unsuspiciously pursued his way, and
presenting himself authoritatively before the deputy,
declared his business and opened his bag. There, in
place of the commission against the heretics, lay the
pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost !

The story goes on to say that the dean raged in
discomfited fury, but that the deputy, though himself
a Roman Catholic, took the matter easily. " Let us
have another commission," he said, " and meanwhile
we will shuffle the cards." The cards were effectually
shuffled, for before any further steps could be taken
Mary had died.

XXIV.

WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.

UPON the i /th of November, 1558, Mary died, and
upon the afternoon of the same day Elizabeth was
proclaimed queen. A new reign is always accounted
a new starting-point, and in this case the traditional
method of dividing history is certainly no misleader.
The old queen had been narrow, dull-witted, bigoted ;
an unhappy woman, a miserable wife, plagued with
sickness, plagued, above all, with a conscience whose
mission seems to have been to distort everything
that came under its cognizance. A woman even
whose good qualities — and she had several — only
seemed to push her further and further down the
path of disaster.

The new queen was twenty-six years old. Old
enough, therefore, to have realized what life meant,
young enough to have almpst illimitable possibilities
still unrevealed to her. No pampered royal heiress,
either, for whom the world of hard facts had no
reality, and the silken shams of a Court constituted
the only standpoint, but one who had already with
steady eyes looked danger and disaster in the face
and knew them for what they were. With a realm

TROUBLES IN THE NORTH. 165

under her hand strong already, and destined before
her death to grow stronger still ; with a spirit too,
strong enough and large enough for her realm ;
stronger perhaps in spite of her many littlenesses
than that of any of the men she ruled over.

And Ireland ? How was it affected by this change
of rulers ? At first fairly well. The early months of
the new reign were marked by a policy of conciliation.
Protestantism was of course, re-established, but there
was no eagerness to press the Act of Conformity with
any severity, and Mass was still said nearly every-
where except in the Pale.

As usual, troubles began in the North. Henry VIII.,
it will be remembered, had granted the hereditary
lands of Tyrone to Con O'Neill, with remainder to
Matthew, the new Baron of Dungannon, whereas
lands in Ulster, as elsewhere in Ireland, had always
hitherto, by the law of Tanistry, been vested in the
tribe, who claimed the right to select whichever of
their late chiefs' sons they themselves thought fit.
This right they now proceeded to exercise. Matthew,
if he was Con's son at all, which was doubtful,
was unquestionably illegitimate, and, therefore, by
English as well as Irish law, wrongfully put in the
place. On the other hand, a younger son Shane —
called affectionately " Shane the Proud " by his clans-
men— was unquestionably legitimate, and what was
of much more importance, was already the idol of
every fighting O'Neill from Lough Foyle to the
banks of the Blackwater.

Shane is one of those Irish heroes — rather perhaps
Ulster heroes, for his aspirations were hardly national

l66 WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.

— whom it is extremely difficult to mete out justice to
with a perfectly even hand. He was unquestionably
three-fourths of a savage — that fact we must begin
in honesty by admitting — at the same time, he was a
very brilliant, and, even in many respects attractive,
savage. His letters, though suffering like those of
some other distinguished authors from being trans-
lated, are full of touches of fiery eloquence, mixed
with bombast and the wildest and most monstrously
inflated self-pretension. His habits certainly were not
commendable. He habitually drank, and it is also
said ate a great deal more than was good for him.
He ill-used his unlucky prisoners. He divorced one
wife to marry another, and was eager to have a third
in the lifetime of the second, making proposals at the
same time to the deputy for the hand of his sister, and
again and again petitioning the queen to provide him
with some " English gentlewoman of noble blood, meet
for my vocation, so that by her good civility and bring-
ing up the country would become civil." In spite
however of these and a few other lapses from the
received modern code of morals and decorum, Shane
the Proud is an attractive figure in his way, and we
follow his fortunes with an interest which more
estimable heroes fail sometimes to awaken.

The Baron of Dungannon was in the meantime
dead, having been slain in a scuffle with his half-
brother's followers — some said by his half-brother's
own hand — previous to his father's death. His son,
however, who was still a boy, was safe in England,
and now appealed through his relations to the
Government, and Sir Henry Sidney, who in Lord

DEFEAT OF SUSSEX BY SHANE. 167

Sussex's absence was in command, marched from
Dublin to support the English candidate. At a
meeting which took place at Dundalk Shane seems
however to have convinced Sidney to some degree
of the justice of his claim, and hostilities were delayed
until the matter could be reported to the queen.

Upon Sussex's return from England they broke
out again. Shane, however, had by this time con-
siderably strengthened his position. Not only had he
firmly established himself in the allegiance of his own
tribe, but had found allies and assistants outside it.
There had 'of late been a steady migration of Scotch
islanders into the North of Ireland, " Redshanks " as
they were familarly called, and a body of these, got
together by Shane and kept as a body-guard, enabled
him to act with unusual rapidity and decision. Upon
Sussex attempting to detach two chieftains, O'Reilly
of Brefny and O'Donnell of Tyrconnel, who owed
him allegiance, Shane flew into Brefny and Tyr-
connel, completely overawed the two waverers, and
carried off Calvagh O'Donnell with his wife, who
was a sister-in-law of the Earl of Argyle. The
following summer he encountered Sussex himself and
defeated him, sending his army flying terror-stricken
back upon Armagh. This feat established him as
the hero of the North. No army which Sussex could
again gather together could be induced to risk the
fate of its predecessor. The deputy was a poor
soldier, feeble and vacillating in the field. He
was no match for his fiery assailant ; and after an
attempt to get over the difficulty by suborning one
Neil Grey to make away with the too successful

l68 WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.

Shane, he was reduced to the necessity of coming to
terms. An agreement was entered into with the
assistance of the Earl of Kildare, by which Shane
agreed to present himself at the English Court, and
there, if he could, to make good his claims in person
before the queen.

Few scenes are more picturesque, or stand out more
vividly before our imagination than this visit of the
turbulent Ulster chieftain to the capital of his un-
known sovereign. As he came striding down the
London streets on his way to the Palace, the citizens
ran to their doors to stare at the redoubtable Irish
rebel with his train of galloglasses at his heels — huge
bareheaded fellows clad in saffron shirts, their huge
naked axes swung over their shoulders, their long hair
streaming behind them, their great hairy mantles
dangling nearly to their heels. So attended, and
in such order, Shane presented himself before the
queen, amid a buzz, as may be imagined, of courtly
astonishment. Elizabeth seems to have been equal
to the situation. She motioned Shane, who had
prostrated himself, clansman fashion upon the floor,
to rise, "check'd with a glance the circle's smile,"
eyeing as she did so, not without characteristic
appreciation, the redoubtable thews and sinews of
this the most formidable of her vassals.

Her appreciation, equally characteristically, did not
hinder her from taking advantage of a flaw in his
safe-conduct to keep Shane fuming at her Court until
he had agreed to her own terms. When at last he
was allowed to return home it was with a sort of
compromise of his claim. He was not to call himself

THE RULE OF SHANE. l6g

Earl of Tyrone — a distinction to which, in truth, he
seems to have attached little importance — but he
was allowed to be still the O'Neill, with the addi-
tional title of " Captain of Tyrone." To which the
wits of the Court added —

" Shane O'Neill, Lord of the North of Ireland ;
Cousin of St. Patrick. Friend of the Queen of England ;
Enemy of all the world besides."

Shane and his galloglasses went home, and for
some two years he and the Irish Government left one
another comparatively alone. He was supreme now
in the North, and ruled his own subjects at his own
pleasure and according to his own rude fashion.
Sussex made another attempt not long after to poison
him in a gift of wine, which all but killed him and his
entire household, which still included the unhappy
"Countess" and her yet more unhappy htisband
Calvagh O'Donnell, whom Shane kept securely ironed
in a cell at the bottom of his castle. The incident
did not add to his confidence in the Queen's Govern-
ment, or incline him to trust himself again in their
hands, which, all things considered, was hardly sur-
prising.

That in his own wild way Shane kept the North in
order even his enemies admitted. While the East
and West of Ireland were distracted with feuds, and
in the South Ormond and Desmond were wasting
one another's country with unprecedented ferocity.
Ulster was comparatively peaceable and prosperous.
Chiefs who made themselves objectionable to Shane
felt the weight of his arm, but that perhaps had not a

IJO WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.

little to say to this tranquillity. Mr. Froude — no ex-
aggerated admirer of Irish heroes — tells us apropos of
this time, " In O'Neill's county alone in Ireland were
peasants prosperous, or life and property safe," though
he certainly adds that their prosperity flourished
largely upon the spoils collected by them from the
rest of the country.

That Shane himself believed that he had so far kept
his word with Elizabeth is pretty evident, for in a
letter to her written in his usual inflated style about
the notorious Sir Thomas Stukeley, he entreats that
she will pardon the latter " for his sake and in the
name of the services which he had himself rendered to
England." Whether Elizabeth, or still more Sidney,
were equally convinced of those services is an open
question.

Shane's career however was rapidly running to a
close. In 1565 he made a sudden and unexpected
descent upon the Scots in Antrim, where, after a fierce
combat, an immense number of the latter were
slaughtered, a feat for which he again had the audacity
to write to Elizabeth and assure her that it was all
done in her service. Afterwards he made a descent
on Connaught, driving back with him into his own
country over 4000 head of cattle which he had
captured. His game, however, was nearly at an
end. Sir Henry Sidney was now back to Ireland,
this time with the express purpose of crushing the
rebel, and had marched into Ulster with a con-
siderable force for that purpose. Shane, nevertheless,
still showed a determined front. Struck up an
alliance with Argyle, arid wrote to France for

ENERGY OF SIDNEY.

instant aid to hold Ulster against "Elizabeth, nay, in
spite of his recent achievement, he seems to have even
hoped to win the Scotch settlers over to his side.
Sidney however was this time in earnest, and was
a man of very different calibre from Sussex, in whom
Shane had previously found so easy an antagonist-
He marched right across Ulster, and entered Tyrcon-
nel ; reinstated the O'Donnells who had been
driven thence by Shane ; continued his march to
Sligo, and from there to Connaught, leaving Colonel
Randolph and the O'Donnells to hold the North and
finish the work which he had begun.

Randolph's camp was pitched at Dorry — not then
the protegee of London, nor yet famed in story, but a
mere insignificant hamlet, consisting of an old castle
and a disused graveyard. It was this latter site that
the unlucky English commander selected for his
camp, with, as might be expected, the most disas-
trous results. Fever broke out, the water proved to
be poisonous, and in a short time half the force were
dead or dying, Randolph himself being amongst
the former. An explosion which occurred in a
magazine finished the disaster, and the scared sur-
vivors escaped in dismay to Carrickfergus. Local
superstition long told tales of the fiery portents and
miracles by which the heretic soldiery were driven
from the sacred precincts which their presence had
poluted.

With that odd strain of greatness which ran through
her, Elizabeth seems to have accepted this disaster
well, and wrote " comfortable words " to Sidney upon
the subject For the time being, however, the attack

172 WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.

upon Shane devolved of necessity wholly upon his
native foes.

Aided by good fortune they proved for once
more than a match for him. Encouraged by the
disaster of the Derry garrison, Shane made a hasty
advance into Tyrconnel, and crossed with a consider-
able force over the ford of Lough Swilly, near Letter-
kenny. He found the O'Donnells, though fewer in
number than his own forces, established in a strong
position upon the other side. From this position he
tried to drive them by force, but the O'Donnells were
prepared, and Shane's troops coming on in disorder
were beaten back upon the river. The tide had in
the meantime risen, and there was therefore no escape.
Penned between the flood and the O'Donnells, over
3000 of his men perished, many by drowning, but
the greater number being hacked to death upon the
strand. Shane himself narrowly escaped with his
life by another ford.

The Hero of the North was now a broken man.
Such a disaster was not to be retrieved. The English
troops were again coming rapidly up. The victorious
O'Donnells held all ' the country behind him. A
French descent, even if it had come, would hardly
have saved him now. In this extremity a desperate
plan occurred to him. Followed by a few horsemen,
and accompanied by the unhappy "Countess" who had
so long shared his curious fortunes, he rode off to the
camp of the Scotch settlers in Antrim, there to throw
himself on their mercy and implore their support.
It was an insane move. He was received with
seeming courtesy, and a banquet spread in his

MURDER OF SHANE. 173

honour. Lowering looks however were bent upon him
from every side of the table. Captain Pierce, an
English officer, had been busy the day before stirring
up the smouldering embers of anger. Suddenly a
taunt was flung out by one of the guests at the
discomfited hero. Shane — forgetting perhaps where
he was — sprang up to revenge it. A dozen swords
and skeans blazed out upon him, and he fell,
pierced by three or four of his entertainers at
once. His body was then tossed into an old
ruined chapel hard by, where the next day his head
was hacked off by Captain Pierce, and carried to
Sidney, who sent it to be spiked upon Dublin Castle.
It was but too characteristic an end of an eminently
characteristic career.

ST. PATRICK'S BELL.

XXV.

BETWEEN TWO STORMS.

BY 1566 Sir Henry Sidney became Lord-deputy,
not now in the room of another, but fully appointed.
With the possible exception of Sir John Perrot, he
was certainly the ablest of all the viceroys to whom
Elizabeth committed power in Ireland. Unlike
others he had the advantage, too, of having served
first in the country in subordinate capacities, and so
earning his experience. He even seems to have been
fairly popular, which, considering the nature of some
of his proceedings, throws a somewhat sinister light,
it must be owned, upon those of his successors and
predecessors.

After the death and defeat of Shane the Proud a
lull took place, and the new deputy took the oppor-
tunity of making a progress through the south and
west of the island, which he reports to be all terribly
wasted by war. Many districts, he says, " had but one-
twentieth part of their former population." Galway,
worn out by incessant attacks, could scarcely defend
her walls. Athenry had but four respectable house-
holders left, who "sadly presenting the rusty keys
of their once famous town, confessed themselves unable
to defend it,"

SIR HENRY SIDNEY, LORD-DEPUTY FROM 156$ TO 1587.
(From an engraving by Harding.}

176 BETWEEN TWO STORMS.

Sidney was one of the first to relinquish what had
hitherto been the favourite and traditional policy of
all English governors, that, namely, of playing one
great lord or chieftain against another, and to
attempt the larger task of putting down and punish-
ing all signs of insubordination especially in the great.
In this respect he was the political parent of Strafford,
who acted the same part sixty years later. He had
not — any more than his great successor — to reproach
himself either with feebleness in the execution of
his policy. The number of military executions that
mark his progress seem to have startled his own
coadjutors, and even to have evoked some slight
remonstrance from Elizabeth herself. " Down they
go at every corner ! " the Lord-deputy writes at this
time triumphantly in an account of his own proceed-
ings, " and down, God willing, they shall go."

A plan for appointing presidents of provinces had
been a favourite with the late deputy, Sussex, and
was now revived. Sir Edward Fitton, one of the
judges of the Queen's Bench, was appointed to the
province of Connaught — a miserably poor appoint-
ment as it turned out ; Sir John Perrot a little later
to Munster ; Leinster for the present the deputy
reserved for himself. This done he returned, first
pausing to arrest the Earl of Desmond and carrying
him and his brother captive to Dublin and eventually
to London, where according to the queen's orders he
was to be brought in order that she might adjudicate
herself in the quarrel between him and Ormond.

The two earls — they were stepson and stepfather by
the way — had for years been at fierce feud, a feud

MILITARY COLONIES. 177

which had desolated the greater part of the South of
Ireland. It was a question of titles and ownership,
and therefore exclusively one for the lawyers. The
queen, however, was resolved that it should be de-
cided in Ormond's favour. Ormond was " sib to
the Boleyns ; " Ormond had been the playmate of
"that sainted young Solomon, King Edward," and
Ormond therefore, it was quite clear, must know
whether the lands were his own or not.

Against the present Desmond nothing worse was
charged than that he had enforced what he considered
his palatinate rights in the old, high-handed, time-
immemorial fashion. His father, however, had been
in league with Spain, and he himself was held to be
contumacious, and had never been on good terms with
any of the deputies.

On this occasion he had, however, surrendered
himself voluntarily to Sidney. Nevertheless, upon
his arrival he was kept a close prisoner, and upon
attempting, sometime afterwards, to escape, was seized,
and only received his life on condition of surren-
dering the whole of his ancestral estates to the
Crown, a surrender which happened to fit in very con-
veniently with a plan upon which the attention of the
English Council was at that time turned.

The expenses of Ireland were desperately heavy,
and Elizabeth's frugal soul was bent upon some plan
for their reduction. A scheme for reducing the cost
of police duty by means of a system of military
colonies had long been a favourite one, and an oppor-
tunity now occurred for turning it into practice. A
number of men of family, chiefly from Devonshire

178 BETWEEN TWO STORMS.

and Somersetshire, undertook to migrate in a body
to Ireland, taking with them their own farm ser-
vants, their farm implements, and everything neces-
sary for the work of colonization. The leader of
these men was Sir Peter Carew, who held a shadowy
claim over a vast tract of territory, dating from the
reign of Henry II., a claim which, however, had been
effectually disposed of by the lawyers. The scheme
as it was first proposed was a truly gigantic one. A
line was to be drawn from Limerick to Cork, and
everything south of that line was to be given over to
the adventurers. As for the natives, they said, they
would undertake to settle with them. All they re-
quired was the queen's permission. Everything else
they could do for themselves.

So heroic a measure was not to be put in force at
once. As far as Carew's claims went, he took the
matter, however, into his own hands by forcibly ex-
pelling the occupiers of the lands in question, and
putting his own retainers into them. As fortune
would have it, amongst the first lands thus laid hold
of were some belonging to the Butlers, brothers of
Lord Ormond, and therefore probably the only Irish
landowners whose cry for justice was pretty certain
just then to be heard in high quarters. Horrible tales
of the atrocities committed by Carew and his band
was reported by Sir Edward Butler, who upon his
side was not slow to commit retaliations of the same
sort. A spasm of anger, and a wild dread of coming
contingencies flew through the whole South of Ire-
land. Sir James Fitzmaurice, cousin of the Earl of
Desmond, broke into open rebellion ; so did also both

PACIFICATION OF ORMOND. 179

the younger Butlers. Ormond himself, who was in
England, was as angry as the fiercest, and informed
Cecil in plain terms that "if the lands of good sub-
jects were not to be safe, he for one would be a good
subject no longer."

It was no part of the policy of the Government to
alienate the one man in Ireland upon whose loyalty they
could depend at a pinch. By the personal efforts of the
queen his wrath was at last pacified, and he agreed
to accept her earnest assurance that towards him at
least no injury was intended. This done, he induced
his brothers to withdraw from the alliance, while Sir
Henry Sidney, sword in hand, went into Munster and
carried out the work of pacification in the usual fashion,
burning villages, destroying the harvest, driving off
cattle, blowing up castles, and hanging their garrisons
in strings over the battlements. After which he
marched to Connaught, leaving Sir Humphrey Gilbert
behind him to keep order in the south.

For more than two years Sir James Fitzmaurice
continued to hold out in his rocky fastness amongst
the Galtese mountains. A sort of grim humour
pervades the relations between him and Sir John
Perrot, the new President of Munster. Perrot had
boasted upon his arrival that he would soon " hunt
that fox out of his hole." The fox, however, showed
a disposition to take the part of the lion, sallying out
unexpectedly, ravaging the entire district, burning
Kilmallock, and returning again to his mountains
before he could be interfered with. The following
year he marched into Ulster, and on his way home burnt
Athlone, the English garrison there looking help-

l8o BETWEEN TWO STORMS.

lessly on ; joined the two Mac-an-Earlas as they
were called, the sons of Lord Clanricarde, and
assisted them to lay waste Galvvay, and so returned
triumphantly across the Shannon to Tipperary. Once
Perrot all but made an end of him, but his soldiers
took that convenient opportunity of mutinying, and
so baulked their leader of his prey. Another time,
in despair of bringing the matter to any conclusion,
the president proposed that it should be decided by
single combat between them, a proposal which Fitz-
maurice prudently resisted on the ground that though
Perrot's place could no doubt readily be supplied,
his own was less easily to fill, and that therefore for
his followers' sake he must decline.

At last the long game of hide-and-seek was brought
to an end by Sir James offering to submit, to
which Perrot agreeing, he took the required oaths in
the church of Kilmallock, the scene of his former
ravages, and kissed the president's sword in token
of his regret for " the said most mischievous part."
This farce gravely gone through, he sailed for
France, and Munster for a while was at peace. It
was only a temporary lull though. The Desmond
power was still too towering to be left alone, and
both its defenders and the Government knew that they
were merely indulging in a little breathing time before
the final struggle.

XXVI.

THE DESMOND REBELLION.

THE tale of the great Desmond rebellion which
ended only with the ruin of that house, and with the
slaughter or starvation of thousands of its unhappy
adherents, is one of those abortive tragedies of which
the whole history of Ireland is full. Our pity for the
victims' doom, and our indignation for the cold-blooded
cruelty with which that doom was carried out, is
mingled with a reluctant realization of the fact that
the state of things which preceded it was practically
impossible, that it had become an anomaly, and
that as such it was bound either to change or to
perish.

From the twelfth century onwards, the Desmond
Geraldines had been lords, as has been seen, of a vast
tract of Ireland, covering the greater part of Munster.
Earlier and perhaps more completely than any of the
other great Norman houses, they had become Irish
chieftains rather than English subjects, and the opening
of Elizabeth's reign found them still what for centuries
past they had been, and with their power, within their
own limits, little if at all curtailed. The Desmond

PREPARATIONS FOR THE STRUGGLE. 183

of the day had still his own judges or Brehons, by
whose judgment he professed to rule. He had
still his own palatinate courts ; he still collected his
dues by force, driving away his clansmen's cattle,
and distraining those who resisted him. Only a
few years before this time, during an expedition of
the kind, he and Ormond had encountered one
another in the open field at AfTane, upon the
Southern Blackwater, each side flying their banners,
and shouting their war cries as if no queen's represen-
tative had ever been seen or heard of.

Such a state of things, it was plain, could not go on
indefinitely, would not indeed have gone on as long
but for the confusion and disorder in which the coun-
try had always been plunged, and especially the want
of all settled communication. The palatinate of
Ormond, it is true, was theoretically in much the
same state, but then Ormond was a keener sighted
and a wiser man than Desmond, and knew when the
times demanded redress. He had of late even made
some effort to abolish the abominable system of
" coyne and livery," although, as he himself frankly
admits, he was forced to impose it again in another
form not long afterwards.

Sir James meanwhile had left Ireland, and at every
Catholic Court in Europe was busily pleading for aid
towards a crusade against England. Failing in France,
he appealed to Philip of Spain. Philip, however, at the
moment was not prepared to break with Elizabeth,
whereupon Fitzmaurice, undeterred by failure, pre-
sented himself next before the Pope. Here he was
more successful, and preparations for the collection of

184 THE DESMOND REBELLION.

a considerable force was at once set on foot, a pro-
minent English refugee, Dr. Nicolas Saunders, being
appointed to accompany it as legate.

Saunders, who had distinguished himself not long
before by a violent personal attack against Elizabeth,
threw himself heart and soul into the enterprise, and
in a letter to Philip pointed out all the advantages
that were to be won by it to the Catholic cause.
"Men," he assured him, " were not needed." Guns,
powder, a little money, and a ship or two with stores
from Spain, and the whole country would soon be at
his feet.

Although absurdly ignorant, as his own letters prove,
of a country of which he had once been nominally
king, Philip knew rather more probably about the
circumstance of the case than Saunders, and he met
these insinuating suggestions coldly. A fleet in the
end was fitted out and sent from Civita Vecchia,
under the command of an English adventurer Stuke-
ley, the same Stukeley in whose favour we saw Shane
O'Neill appealing to Elizabeth. Though it started for
Ireland it never arrived there. Touching at Lisbon,
Stukeley was easily persuaded to give up his first
scheme, and to join Sebastian, king of Portugal, in a
buccaneering expedition to Morocco, and at the battle
of Alcansar both he and Sebastian with the greater
part of their men were killed.

Fitzmaurice meanwhile had gone to Spain by land,
and had there embarked for Ireland, accompanied by
his wife, two children, Saunders, the legate, Allen, an
Irish priest, a small party of Italians and Spaniards,
and a few English refugees, and bringing with them

LANDING OF DESMOND. 185

a banner especially consecrated by the Pope for this
service.

Their landing-place was Dingle, and from there
they crossed to Smerwick, where they fortified the
small island peninsula of Oilen-an-Oir, or " Gold
Island," where they were joined by John and James
Fitzgerald, brothers of the Earl of Desmond, and by
a party of two hundred O'Flaherties from lar Con-
naught, who, however, speedily left again.

But Desmond still vacillated helplessly. Now that
the time had come he could not make up his mind
what to do, or with whom to side. He was evidently
cowed. His three imprisonments lay heavily upon his
soul. He knew the power of England better too than
most of his adherents, and shrank from measuring his
own strength against it What he did not realize was
that it was too late now to go back. He had stood out
for what he considered his own rights when it would
have been more politic to have submitted, and now
he wanted to submit when it was only too plain
to all who could read the signs of the times that
the storm was already upon him, and that no humility
or late-found loyalty could avail to avert that doom
which hung over his house.

If Desmond himself was slow to rise, the whole South
of Ireland was in a state of wild tumult and excitement
when the news of the actual arrival of Fitzmaurice and
the legate became known. Nor in the south alone.
In Connaught and the Pale the excitement was very
little less. Kildare,like Desmond, held back fearing the
personal consequences of rebellion, but all the younger
lords of the Pale were eager to throw in their lot with

CATHERINE, THE "OLD COUNTESS OF DESMOND.

(Reputed to have been killed at the age of 120 by a fall from a cherry tree.)

(From the Burne Collection?)

DEATH OF FITZMAURICE. 187

Fitzmaurice. Alone amongst the Irishmen of his
day, he possessed all the necessary qualifications of a
leader. He had already for years successfully resisted
the English. He was known to be a man of great
courage and tenacity, and his reputation as a general
stood deservedly high in the opinion of all his
countrymen.

That extraordinary good fortune, however, which
has so often befallen England at awkward moments,
and never more conspicuously than during the closing
years of the sixteenth century, did not fail now.
Fitzmaurice started for Connaught to encourage
the insurrection which had been fast ripening there
under the brutal rule of Sir Nicolas Malby, its
governor. A trumpery quarrel had recently broken
out between the Desmonds and the Mayo Bourkes,
and this insignificant affair sealed the fate of what at
one moment promised to be the most formidable
rebellion which had ever assailed the English power
in Ireland. At a place called Barrington's Bridge, not
far from Limerick, where the little river Muckern
or Mulkearn was then crossed by a ford, Fitz-
maurice was set upon by the Bourkes. Only a few
followers were with him at the time, and in turning to
expostulate with one of his assailants, he was killed
by a pistol shot, and fell from his horse. This was
upon the 1 8th of August, 1579. From that moment
the Desmond rising was doomed.

Desmond meanwhile still sat vacillating in his
own castle of Askeaton, neither joining the rising,
nor yet exerting himself vigorously to put it down.
Malby, who had newly arrived from Connaught, took

l88 THE DESMOND REBELLION.

steps to hasten his decision. Ordering the earl to
come to htm, and the latter still hesitating, he marched
against Askeaton, utterly destroyed the town up to
the walls of the castle, burning everything in the
neighbourhood, including the abbey and the tombs
of the Desmonds, the castle itself only escaping
through the lack of ammunition.

This hint seems to have sufficed. Desmond was at
last convinced that the time for temporizing was over.
He rose, and all Munster rose with him. Ormond was
still in London, and hurried over to find all in disorder.
Drury had lately died, and the only other English com-
mander, Malby, was crippled for want of men, and
had been obliged to retreat into Connaught. The new
deputy, Sir William Pelham, had just arrived, and he
and Ormond now proceeded to make a concerted
attack. Advancing in two separate columns they
destroyed everything which came in their way ; men,
women, children, infants, the old, the blind, the sick all
alike were mercilessly slaughtered ; not a roof, how-
ever humble, was spared ; not a living creature that
crossed their path survived to tell the tale. Lady
Fitzmaurice and her two little children seem to have
been amongst the number of these nameless and un-
counted victims, for they were never heard of again.
From Adare and Askeaton to the extreme limits of
Kerry, everything perishable was destroyed. The
two commanders met one another at Tralee, and from
this point carried on their raid in unison, and returned,
to Askeaton and Cork, leaving the whole country a
desert behind them. There was little or no resistance.
The Desmond clansmen were not soldiers ; they were

HELP FROM SPAIN. 189

unarmed, or armed only with spears and skeans.
They had just lost their only leader. They could
do nothing but sullenly watch the progress of the
English forces. Desmond, his two brothers, and
the legate were already fugitives. The rising seemed
to be all but crushed, when a new incident occurred
to spur it into a momentary vitality.

Four Spanish vessels, containing 800 men, chiefly
Italians, had managed to pass unperceived by the
English admiral, Winter's, fleet, and to land at
Smerwick, where they established themselves in Fitz-
maurice's dismantled fort. They found everything in
confusion. They had brought large supplies of arms
for their Irish allies, but there were apparently no Irish
allies to give them to. The legate and Desmond had
first to be found, and now that arms had come, the
Munster tribesmen had for the most part been killed
or dispersed. Ormond and Pelham's terrible raid
had done its work, and the heart of the rising was
broken. The Pale, however, had now caught the fire,
and though Kildare, its natural leader, still hung back,
Lord Baltinglass and some of the bolder spirits flew
to arms, and threw themselves into the Wicklow
highlands where they joined their forces with those
of the O'Byrnes, and were presently joined by Sir
John of Desmond and a handful of Fitzgeralds.

Lord Grey de Wilton had by this time arrived in
Ireland as deputy. Utterly inexperienced in Irish
wars, he despised and underrated the capabilities of
those opposed to him, and refused peremptorily to listen
to the advice of more experienced men. Hastening
south, his advanced guard was caught by Baltinglass

THE DESMOND REBELLION.

and the other insurgents in the valley of Glenmalure.
A well-directed fire was poured into the defile ; the
English troops broke, and tried to flee, and were shot
down in numbers amongst the rocks.

Lord Grey had no time to retrieve this disaster.
Leaving the Pale tc the mercy of the successful
rebels, he hastened south, and arrived in Kerry before
Smerwick fort. Amongst the small band of officers
who accompanied him on this occasion were Walter
Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, both then young men,
and both of them all but unknown to fame.

The English admiral, Winter, with his fleet had
long been delayed by bad weather. When at length
it arrived, cannon were landed and laid in position
upon the sand hills. Next day the siege com-
menced. There was heavy firing on both sides, but
the fort was soon found to be untenable. The garrison
thereupon offered to capitulate, and an uncondi-
tional surrender was demanded. There being no alter-
native, these terms were accepted. Lord Grey there-
upon " put in certain bands," under the command of
Captain Raleigh. "The Spaniard," says Spenser,
who was an eye-witness of the whole scene. " did
absolutely yield himself, and the fort, and all therein,
and only asked mercy." This, " it was not thought
good," he adds, "to show them." They were accordingly
all slaughtered in cold blood, a few women and priests
who were with them hanged, the officers being reserved
for ransom. "There was no other way," Spenser
observes in conclusion, " but to make that end of
them as thus was done." l

1 "View of the State of Ireland," pp. 5, n.

&ESMOND A FUGITIVE. igt

This piece of work satisfactorily finished, Grey
returned rapidly to Dublin to crush the Leinster
insurgents. Kildare and Delvin, though they had
kept themselves clear of the rebellion, were arrested
and thrown into prison. Small bands of troopers
were sent into the Wicklow mountains to hunt out
the insurgents. Baltinglass escaped to the Continent,
but the two Eustaces his brothers, with Garrot OToole
and Feagh McHugh were caught, killed, and their
heads sent to Dublin. Clanricarde's two sons, the
Mac-an-Earlas, were out in the Connemara mountains
and could not be got at ; but Malby again overran
their country, burning houses and slaughtering without
mercy. In Dublin, the Anglo-Irishmen of the Pale
were being brought to trial for treason, and hung or
beheaded in batches. Kildare was sent to England
to die in the Tower. With the exception of the North,
which on this occasion had kept quiet, the whole
country had become one great reeking shambles ;
what sword and rope and torch had spared, famine
came in to complete.

The Earl of Desmond was now a houseless fugitive
hunted like a wolf or mad dog through the valleys
and over the mountains of his own ancestral " king-
dom." His brothers had already fallen. Sir John
Fitzgerald had been killed near Cork, and his body
hung head downwards, by Raleigh's order, upon the
bridge of the river Lee. The other brother, Sir James,
had met with a similar fate. Saunders, the legate, had
died of cold and exposure. Desmond alone escaped,
time after time, and month after month. Hunted, des-
perate, in want of the bare necessities of life, he was still

IQ2 THE DESMOND REBELLION.

in his own eyes the Desmond, ancestral owner of nearly
a hundred miles of territory. Never in his most suc-
cessful period a man of any particular strength of
character, sheer pride seems to have upheld him now.
He scorned to make terms with his hated enemy,
Ormond. If he yielded to any one, he sent word, it
would be only to the queen herself in person. He
was not given the chance. Hunted over the Slievemish
mountains, with the price of .£1,000 on his head, one
by one the trusty companions who had clung to him
so faithfully were taken and killed. His own course
could inevitably be but a short one. News reached
the English captain at Castlemain one night that the
prey was not far off. A dozen English soldiers stole
up the stream in the grey of the morning. The cabin
where the Desmond lay was surrounded, the door
broken in, and the earl stabbed before there was time
for him to spring from his bed. The tragedy had now
been played out to the bitterest end. As formerly
with the Leinster Geraldines, so now with the Mun-
ster ones, of the direct heirs of the house only a
single child was left, a feeble boy, afterwards known
by the significant title of the " Tower Earl," with the
extinguishing of whose sickly tenure of life the very
name of Desmond ceases to appear upon the page of
Irish history.

XXVII.

BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.

Two great risings against Elizabeth's power in
Ireland had thus been met and suppressed. A third
and a still more formidable one was yet to come. The
interval was filled with renewed efforts at colonization
upon a yet larger scale than before. Munster, which
at the beginning of the Desmond rising had been
accounted the most fertile province in Ireland, was
now little better than a desert. Not once or twice*
but many times the harvest had been burnt and de-
stroyed, and great as had been the slaughter, numerous
as were the executions, they had been far eclipsed by
the multitude of those who had died of sheer famine.

Spenser's evidence upon this point has been often
quoted, but no other words will bring the picture
before us in the same simple, awful vividness ; nor
must it be forgotten that the man who tells it was
under no temptation to exaggerate having himself
been a sharer in the deeds which had produced so
sickening a calamity.

"They were brought to such wretchedness," he
says, " that any stony heart would rue the same.
Out of every corner of the woods and glens, they

IQ4 BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.

came, creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs
could not bear them. They looked like anatomies of
death ; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their
graves. They did eat the dead carrions, where they
did find them, yea and one another soon after, in as
much as the very carcases they spared not to scrape
out of their graves ; and if they found a plot, of
watercresses or shamrocks, there they thronged as to
a feast."

To replace this older population, thus starved,
slaughtered, made away with by sword and pestilence
with new colonists was the scheme of the hour.
Desmond's vast estate, covering nearly six hundred
thousand Irish acres, not counting waste land, had all
been declared forfeit to the Crown. This and a con-
siderable portion of territory also forfeit in Leinster
was now offered to English colonists upon the most
advantageous terms. No rent was to be paid at first,
and for ten years the undertakers were to be allowed
to send their exports duty free.

Many eminent names figure in the long list of
these " undertakers " ; amongst them Sir Walter
Raleigh, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Wareham St.
Leger, Edmund Spenser himself, Sir Thomas Norris,
and others, all of whom received grants of different
portions. But " the greater," says Leland, " their
rank and consequence, the more were they emboldened
to neglect the terms of their grant." Instead of com-
pleting their stipulated number of tenantry, the same
persons often were admitted as tenants to different
undertakers, and in the same seniory sometimes
served at once as freeholder, leaseholder, and copy-

FAILURE OF COLONIZATION SCHEME. 195

holder, so as to fill up the necessary number of each
denomination.

The whole scheme of colonization proved, in short,
a miserable failure. English farmers and labourers
declined to come over in sufficient numbers. Those
that did come left again in despair after a time. The
dispossessed owners hung about, and raided the goods
of the settlers whenever opportunity offered. The
exasperation on both sides increased as years went
on ; the intruders becoming fewer and more tyrannical,
the natives rapidly growing more numerous and more
desperate. It was plain that the struggle would break
out again at the first chance which offered itself.

That occasion arose not in Munster itself, but at
the opposite end of the island. In Ulster the great
southern rising had produced singularly little excite-
ment. The chiefs for the most part had remained
aloof, and to a great degree, loyal. The O'Don-
nells, who had been reinstated it will be remem-
bered in their own territory by Sidney, kept the
peace. Sir John Perrot, who after the departure
of Grey became Lord-deputy, seems in spite of his
severity to have won confidence. Old Tyrlough
Luinagh who had been elected O'Neill at the death of
Shane, seems even to have felt a personal attachment
for him, which is humorously shown by his con-
senting on several occasions to appear at his court in
English attire, habiliments which the Irish, like the
the Scotch chiefs, objected to strongly as tending
to make them ridiculous. " Prythee at least, my
lord," he is reported to have said on one of these
occasions, " let my chaplain attend me in his Irish

LORD-DEPUTY FROM 1584 TO 1588.

F IT z WILLIAM'S SEARCH FOR TREASURE. 197

mantle, that so your English rabble may be directed
from my uncouth figure and laugh at him."

Perrot, however, had now fallen under the royal
displeasure ; had been recalled and sent to the
Tower, a common enough climax in those days to
years spent in the arduous Irish service. His place
was taken in 1588 by Sir William Fitzwilliam, who
had held it nearly thirty years earlier. Fitzwilliam
was a man of very inferior calibre to Perrot. Avari-
cious by nature he had been highly dissatisfied with
the poor rewards which his former services had ob-
tained. Upon making some remonstrance to that
effect he had been told that the " position of an Irish
Lord-deputy was an honourable one and should
challenge no reward." Upon this hint he seems now
to have acted. Since the Lord-deputy was not to be
better rewarded, the Lord-deputy, he apparently con-
cluded, had better help himself. The Spanish Armada
had been destroyed a few years back, and ships be-
longing to it had been strewed in dismal wreck. all
along the North, South, and West coasts of Ireland.
It was believed that much gold had been hidden away
by the wretched survivors, and fired with the hope of
laying his own hands upon this treasure, Sir William
first issued a permission for searching, and then started
himself upon the search. He marched into Ulster in
the dead of winter, at considerable cost to the State,
and with absolutely no result. Either, as was most
likely, there was no treasure, or the treasure had been
well hidden. Furious at this disappointment he ar-
rested two upon his own showing of the most loyal
and law-abiding landowners in Ulster, Sir Owen

BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.

'McToole and Sir John O'Dogherty ; dragged them
back to Dublin with him, flung them into the castle,
and demanded a large sum for their liberation.

This was a high-handed proceeding in all conscience,
but there was worse to come ; it seemed as if the
new deputy had laid himself out for the task of in-
flaming Ulster to the highest possible pitch of exaspe-
ration, and so of once more awakening the scarce extin-
guished flames of civil war. McMahon, the chief of
Monaghan, had surrendered his lands, held previously
by tanistry, and had received a new grant of them
under the broad seal of England, to himself and
his heirs male, and failing such heirs to his brother
Hugh. At his death Hugh went to Dublin and re-
quested to be put into possession of his inheritance.
This Fitzwilliam agreed to, and returned with him
to Monaghan, apparently for the purpose. Hardly
had he arrived there, however, before he trumped up
an accusation to the effect that Hugh McMahon
had collected rents two years previously by force —
the only method, it may be said in passing, by which
in those unsettled parts of the country rents ever were
collected at all. It was not an offence by law being
committed outside the shire, and he was therefore tried
for it by court-martial. He was brought before a
jury of private soldiers, condemned, and executed in
two days. His estate was thereupon broken up, the
greater part of it being divided between Sir Henry Bag-
nail, three or four English officers, and some Dublin
lawyers, the Crown reserving for itself a quit rent.
Little wonder if the other Ulster landowners felt that
their turn would come next, and that no loyalty could

THE EARL OF TYRONE. IQ9

assure a man's safety so long as he had anything to
lose that was worth the taking.

At this time the natural leader of the province was
not Tyrlough Luinagh, who though called the O'Neill
was an old man and failing fast. The real leader was
Hugh O'Neill, son of Matthew the first Baron of
Dungannon, who had been killed, it will be remem-
bered, by Shane O'Neill, by whose connivance Hugh's
elder brother had also, it was believed, been made
away with. Hugh had been educated in England,
had been much at Court, and had found favour with
Elizabeth, who had confirmed him in the title of Earl
of Tyrone which had been originally granted to his
grandfather.

Tyrone was the very antipodes of Shane, the last
great O'Neill leader. He was much more, in fact, of an
English politician and courtier than an Irish chieftain.
He had served in the English army ; had fought with
credit under Grey in Munster, and was intimately
acquainted with all the leading Englishmen of the
day. Even his religion, unlike that of most Irish
Catholics of the day, seems to have sat but lightly
upon him. Captain Lee, an English officer, quar-
tered in Ulster, in a very interesting letter to the
queen written about this time, assures her confiden-
tially that, although a Roman Catholic, he " is less
dangerously or hurtfully so than some of the greatest
in the English Pale," for that when he accompanied
the Lord-deputy to church " he will stay and hear a
sermon ; " whereas they " when they have reached the
church door depart as if they were wild cats." He
adds, as a further recommendation, that by way of

200 BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.

domestic chaplain he has at present but " one little
cub of an English priest." Lord Essex in still plainer
terms told Tyrone himself when he was posing as the
champion of Catholicism : " Dost thou talk of a free
exercise of religion ! Why thou carest as little for
religion as my horse."

Such a man was little likely to rush blindly into a
rebellion in which he had much to lose and little to
gain. He knew, as few Irishmen knew, the strength
of England. He knew something also of Spain,
and of what had come of trusting for help in that
direction. Hitherto, therefore, his influence had been
steadily thrown upon the side of order. He had
more than once assisted the deputy to put down
risings in the north, and, on the whole, had borne his
part loyally as a dutiful subject of the queen.

Now, however, he had come to a point where the
ways branched. He had to choose his future course,
and there were many causes pushing him all but
irresistibly into an attitude of rebellion. One of
these was the arbitrary arrest of his brother-in-law
Hugh O'Donnell, called Red Hugh, who had been
induced to come on board a Government vessel by
means of a friendly invitation, and had been then
and there seized, flung under hatches, and carried off
as a hostage to Dublin Castle, from which, after years
of imprisonment, he had managed to escape by
stealth in the dead of winter, and arrived half dead
6f cold and exposure in his own country, where his
treatment had aroused the bitterest and most implac-
able hostility in the breast of all the clan. A more
directly personal affair, and the one that probably

REVOLT OF TYRONB. 2OI

more than any other single cause pushed Tyrone over
the frontiers of rebellion, was the following. Upon the
death of his wife he had fallen in love with Bagnall,
the Lord-Marshall's, sister, and had asked for her hand.
This Bagnall, for some reason, refused, whereupon
Tyrone, having already won the lady's heart, carried
her off, and they were married, an act which the
marshall never forgave.

From that moment he became his implacable
enemy, made use of his position to ply the queen
and Council with accusations against his brother-
in-law, and when Tyrone replied to those charges
the answers were intercepted. It took some time to
undermine Elizabeth's confidence in the earl, having
previously had many proofs of his loyalty. It took
some time, too, to induce Tyrone himself to go in the
direction in which every event seemed now to be
pushing him. Once, however, his mind was made up
and his retreat cut off, he set to work at his prepa-
rations upon a scale which soon showed the Govern-
ment that they had this time no fiery half-savage
Shane, no incapable vacillating Desmond to deal
with.

An alliance with the O'Donnells and the other chiefs
of the north was his first step. He was by no means
to be contented however with a merely provincial
rising. He despatched messages to Connaught, and
enlisted the Burkes in the affair ; also the O'Connor of
Sligo, the McDermot and other western chiefs. In
Wicklow the O'Byrnes, always ready for a fray, agreed
to join the revolt, with all that was left of the
tribes of Leix and Offaly. These, with the Kava-

202 BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.

naghs and others, united to form a solemn union,
binding themselves to stand or fall together. To
Spain Tyrone sent letters urging the necessity of an
immediate despatch of troops. With the Pope he
also put himself into communication, and the ris-
ing was openly and avowedly declared to be a
Catholic one. Just at this juncture old Tyrlough
Luinagh died, and Tyrone forthwith assumed the
soul-stirring name of " The O'Neill " for himself. Let
the Spanish allies only arrive in time and the rule of
England it was confidently declared would shortly in
Ireland be a thing of the past.

INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS.

XXVIII.

BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD.

THE northern river Blackwater — there are at least
three Blackwaters in Ireland — forms the southern
boundary of the county Tyrone, which takes a suc-
cession of deep loops or elbows in order to follow its
windings. At the end of the sixteenth century and
for centuries previously it had marked the boundary
of the territory of the chiefs or princes of Tyrone,
and here, therefore, it was that the struggle between
the earl and the queen's troops advancing from
Dublin was necessarily fought out.

A good deal of desultory righting took place at
first, without any marked result upon either side.
Tyrone got possession of the English fort which
commanded the passage of the river, but it was in
turn snatched from him by the lately arrived deputy,
Lord Borough, who, however, was so severely wounded
in the affray that he had to fall back upon Newry,
where he not long afterwards died. Ireland was
thus for the moment without a governor, and when
after a temporary armistice, which Tyrone spun out
as long as possible in hopes of his Spanish allies
appearing, hostilities recommenced, the command de-

204 BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD.

volved upon his brother-in-law and chief enemy, Sir
Henry Bagnall.

Bagnall had between four and five thousand men
under him, Tyrone having about the same number, or
a little less. A few years previously a very small
body of English troops had been able, as we have
seen, to put to flight fully three times their own
number of Irish. In the last dozen years circum-
stances however had in this respect very materially
changed. The Desmond followers had been for the
most part armed only with skeans and spears, much
as their ancestors had been under Brian Boru. One
English soldier armed with a gun could put to flight
a dozen such assailants as easily as a sportsman a
dozen wolves. Tyrone's men, on the other hand, were
almost as well armed as their antagonists. Some of
these arms had come from Spain, others had been
purchased at high prices from the English soldiery,
others again from dealers in Dublin and elsewhere.
Man to man, and with equal arms, the Ulster men
were fully equal to their assailants, as they were now
about to prove.

In August, 1598, Bagnall advancing from the south
found Tyrone engaged in a renewed attack upon the
fort of Blackwater, which he had invested, and was
endeavouring to reduce by famine. At the advance
of Bagnall he withdrew however to a strong position
a few miles from the fort, and there awaited attack.

The battle was not long delayed. The bitter
personal hatred which animated the two leaders seems
to have communicated itself to the men, and the
struggle was unprecedently fierce and bloody. In

bEFEAT OF BAGNALL. 205

the thick of the engagement Bagnall, lifting his
beaver for a moment to get air, was shot through the
forehead and fell. His fall was followed by the com-
plete rout of his army. Fifteen hundred soldiers
ancl thirteen officers were killed, thirty-four flags
taken, and all the artillery, ammunition, and pro-
visions fell into the victor's hands. The fort im-
mediately surrendered, and the remains of the royal
army fled in confusion to Armagh, which shortly
abandoning, they again fled south, not attempting
to re-form until they took refuge at last in Dundalk.
Such an event as this could have but one result.
All the waverers were decided, and all determined to
throw in their lot with the victor. The talisman
of success is of more vital importance to an Irish
army than probably to any other, not because
the courage of its soldiers is less, but because their
imagination is greater, and more easily worked upon.
A soldier is probably better without too much imagi-
nation. If the auguries are unfavourable he in-
stinctively augments, and exaggerates them tenfold.
Now, however, all the auguries were favourable
Hope stood high. The Catholic cause had never
before showed so favourably. From Malin Head to
Cape Clear all Ireland was in a wild buzz of excite-
ment, and every fighting kern and gallowglass clutched
his pike with a sense of coming triumph.

XXIX.

THE ESSEX FAILURE.

ELIZABETH was now nearly seventy years of age,
and this was her third war in Ireland. Nevertheless,
she and her Council girded themselves resolutely to
the struggle. There could at least be no half-hearted
measure now ; no petty pleas of economy ; no pe-
nurious doling out of men and money. No one, not
even the queen herself, could reasonably question the
gravity of the crisis.

The next person to appear upon the scene is Robert
Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose brilliant mercurial
figure flashes for a moment across the wild and
troubled stage of Ireland, only the next to vanish
like some Will-o'-the-wisp into an abyss of darkness
and disaster.

At that moment his fame as a soldier stood as high
if not higher than that of any of his cotemporaries.
If Raleigh or Sidney had more military genius, if his
old rival, Sir Henry Norris, was a more capable
general, the young earl had eclipsed all others in
mere dash and brilliancy, and within the last few
years had dazzled the eyes of the whole nation by the
success of his famous feat in Spain, " The most

THE ESSEX FAILURE.

brilliant exploit," says Lord Macaulay, "achieved
by English arms upon the Continent, between Agin-
court and Blenheim."

Essex was now summoned to the queen and given
the supreme command in Ireland, with orders to pro-
ceed at once to the reduction of Tyrone. An army of
20,000 infantry and 1,300 horse were placed under
him, and the title of Lord-Lieutenant conferred,
which had not been granted to any one under royal
blood for centuries. He started with a brilliant train,
including a number of well-born volunteers, who
gladly offered their services to the popular favourite,
and landed in Dublin early in the month of April,
1599.

His disasters seem to have dated from the very
moment of his setting foot on Irish soil. Contrary
to orders, he had appointed his relative, the Earl of
Southampton, to the command of the horse, an ap-
pointment which even after peremptory orders from
the queen he declined to cancel. He went south
when he was eagerly expected to go north. Spent a
whole fortnight in taking the single castle of Cahir ;
lingered about the Limerick woods in pursuit of a
nephew of the late Desmond, derisively known as the
"Sugane Earl," or " Earl of Straw," who in the absence
of the young heir had collected the remnants of the
Desmond followers about him, and was in league with
Tyrone. A few weeks later a party of English soldiers
were surprised by the O'Byrnes in Wicklow, and fled
shamefully ; while almost at the same moment — by a
misfortune which was certainly no fault of Essex's, but
which went to swell the list of his disasters — Sir

ARMISTICE WITH TYRONE. 2OQ

Conyers Clifford, the gallant governor of Connaught,
was defeated by the O'Donnells in a skirmish among
the Curlew mountains, and both he and Sir Alexander
Ratcliffe, the second in command, left dead upon the
field.

Essex's very virtues and better qualities, in fact,
were all against him in this fatal service. His
natural chivalrousness, his keen perception of in-
justice, a certain elevation of mind which debarred
him from taking the stereotyped English official
view of the intricate Irish problem ; an indepen-
dence of vulgar motives which made him prone to
see two sides of a question — even where his own in-
terests required that he should see but one — all these
were against him ; all tended to make him seem
vacillating and ineffective ; all helped to bring about
that failure which has made his six months of com-
mand in Ireland the opprobrium ever since of his-
torians.

Even when, after more than one furiously reproachful
letter from the queen, and after his army had been re-
cruited by an additional force of two thousand men, he
at last started for the north, nothing of any impor-
tance happened. He and Tyrone held an amicable and
unwitnessed conference at a ford of the little river
Lagan, at which the enemies of the viceroy did not
scruple afterwards to assert that treason had been
concocted. What, at any rate, is certain is that Essex
agreed to an armistice, which, with so overwhelm-
ing a force at his own disposal, naturally awakened
no little anger and astonishment. Tyrone's personal
courtesy evidently produced a strong effect upon the

210 THE ESSEX FAILURE.

other earl. They were old acquaintances, and Tyrone
was no doubt able to place his case in strong relief.
Essex, too, had that generosity of mind which made
him inconveniently open to expostulation, and he knew
probably well enough that the wrongs of which
Tyrone complained were far from imaginary ones.

Another and a yet more furious letter from the queen
startled him for his own safety. Availing himself of a
permission he had brought with him to return should
occasion seem to require it, he left the command in
the hands of subordinates, flew to Dublin, and em-
barked immediately for England. What befel him
upon his arrival is familiar to every school child, and
the relation of it must not be allowed to divert us
from following the further course of events in Ireland.

CINERARY URN.
(From a Tumulus near Dublin.

XXX.

END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION.

A VERY different man from the chivalrous and
quixotic Essex now took the reins. Charles Blount,
Lord Mountjoy, had expected to be sent to Ireland
when Essex had suddenly been appointed with
ampler powers and a more extended consequence,
and the disappointment had caused him to follow
the course of that ill-starred favourite with ill-con-
cealed jealousy to its tragic end.

Mountjoy was himself a man of cold, clear-sighted,
self-seeking temperament. In almost all English
histories dealing with this period his steadiness and
solid unshowy qualities are contrasted with Essex's
flightiness and failure, to the natural disadvantage of
the latter. This, however, is not perhaps quite the
last word upon the matter, and it is only fair to Essex
that this should be realized.

No master hand has as yet made this special portion
of Irish history his own. When he does so — if the
keen edge of his perceptions, that is to say, has not
been dimmed by too strong an earlier prepossession
— we shall perhaps learn that the admitted failure of
Essex, so disastrous to himself, was more honour-
able than the admitted and the well-rewarded success

CAPTURE OF THE EARL OF ORMOND BY THE o'MORES.
(From the " Pacata Hibernia," of Sir G. Carew.)

i. Ormond and his followers ; 2. Rebel horse and foot ; 3. Rebels concealed in
woods ; 4. Bogs.

SUCCESS OF MOUNTJOY.

of Mountjoy. The situation, as every English leader
soon found, was one that admitted of no possible
fellowship between two alternatives, success and
pity ; between the commonest and most elementary
dictates of humanity, and the approval of the queen
and her Council. There was but one method by
which a success could be assured, and this was the
method which Mountjoy now pushed relentlessly,
and from which Essex's more sensitively attuned
nature evidently shrank. The enemies it was neces-
sary to annihilate were not so much Tyrone's
soldiers, as the poor, the feeble, the helpless, the old,
the women, and the little children. Famine — oddly
called by Edward III. the " gentlest of war's hand-
maids " — was here the only certain, perhaps the
only possible agent. By it, and by it alone, the germs
of insurrection could be stamped out and blighted as
it were at their very birth.

There was no further shrinking either from its
application. Mountjoy established military stations
at different points in the north, and proceeded to
demolish everything that lay between them. With a
deliberation which left little to be desired he made
his soldiers destroy every living speck of green that
was to be seen, burn every roof, and slaughter every
beast which could not be conveniently driven into
camp. With the aid of Sir George Carew, who
enthusiastically endorsed his policy, and has left us
a minute account of their proceedings, they swept
the country before them. The English columns
moved steadily from point to point, establishing them-
selves wherever they went, in strongly fortified out-

214 END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION,

posts, from which points flying detachments were sent
to ravage all the intermediate districts. The ground
was burnt to the very sod ; all harvest utterly cleared
away ; starvation in its most grisly forms again began
to stalk the land ; the people perished by tens of thou-
sands, and the tales told by eye-witnesses of what
they themselves had seen at this time are too sickening
to be allowed needlessly to blacken these pages.

As a policy nothing, however, could be more bril-
liantly successful. At the arrival of Mountjoy the
English power in Ireland was at about the lowest
ebb it ever reached under the Tudors. Ormond,
the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, had recently
been taken captive by the O'Mores in Leinster, by
whom he was held for an enormous ransom. Success,
with all its glittering train, seemed to have gone
bodily over to Tyrone. There was hardly a town in
the whole island that remained in the hands of the
Deputy. Before Mountjoy left all this was simply
reversed. Not only had the royal power regained
everything that had been snatched from it, but from
sea to sea it stood upon a far firmer and stronger basis
than it had ever done before.

Gradually, as the area over which the power of the
Deputy and his able assistant grew wider and wider,
that of the Tyrone fell away and faded. " The con-
sequence of an Irish chieftain above all others,"
observes Leland most weightily, "depended upon
opinion." A true success, that is to say, of which the
gleaming plumes and trophies were not immediately
visible, would have been far more disastrous than a
real failure which could have been gilded over with a

ARRIVAL OF SPANIARDS. 21 5

little delusive gleam of triumph. There was no gleams,
real or imaginary, now. Tyrone was fast coming to
the end of his resources. Surrender or starvation
were staring him with ugly insistence in the face.
The war, in fact, was on the point of dying out from
sheer exhaustion, when a new element came to
infuse momentary courage into the breasts of the
insurgents. Fifty Spanish ships, with Don Juan
d'Aguilar and three thousand soldiers on board, sailed
into Kinsale harbour, where they proceeded to dis-
embark and to occupy the town.

The instant the news of this landing reached
Mountjoy, he, with characteristic vigour, hurried
south with every soldier he could collect, so as to
cut off the new arrivals before their allies had
time to appear. Not a moment was lost. The
Spaniards had landed on the 2Oth of September, 1601,
and by the 23rd the first English soldiers appeared
before the town, and before the end of the month
Mountjoy and Carew had concentrated every man
they had in Ireland around Kinsale.

Tyrone and O'Donnell also hurried south, but their
progress was slower, and when they arrived they
found their allies closely besieged on all sides. Taking
advantage of a frost, which had made the bogs pas-
sable, O'Donnell stole round the English forces and
joined another party of Spaniards who had just
effected a landing at Castlehaven. All Kerry was now
up in arms, under two local chiefs, O'Sullivan Beare
and O'Driscoll. The struggle had resolved itself into
the question which side could hold out longest The
English had the command of the sea, but were the

2l6 END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION.

Spanish fleet to return their position would become to
the last degree perilous. The game for Tyrone to
play was clearly a waiting one. The Spaniards in
Kinsale were weary however of their position, and
urged him to try and surprise the English camp.
Reluctantly, and against his own judgment, he con-
sented. The surprise failed utterly. Information of
it had already reached Carew. The English were
under arms, and after a short struggle Tyrone's men
gave way. Twelve hundred were killed, and the rest
fled in disorder. The Spaniards thereupon surrendered
Kinsale, and were allowed to re-embark for Spain ;
many of the Irish, including O'Donnell, accompanying
them.

This was practically the end. Tyrone retreated to
the north, collecting the remnants of his army as he
went. Carew went south to wreak a summary ven-
geance upon O'Sullivan Beare, and the other Kerry
insurgents, while Mountjoy, following in the wake of
Tyrone, hemmed him gradually further and further
north, repeating at the same time that wasting process
which had already been only too brilliantly successful.

Tyrone had wit enough to see that the game was
played out On the other hand, Mountjoy was eager
to bring the war to an end before the queen's death,
now hourly expected. Terms were accordingly come
to. The earl made his submission, and agreed to
relinquish the title of O'Neill, and to abjure for ever
all alliances with foreign powers or with any of the
enemies of the Crown. In return he was to receive a
full pardon for himself and his followers, and all his
titles and lands were to be confirmed to him.

SUBMISSION OF TYRONE.

219

Two days after this the queen's death was an-
nounced. We are told that Tyrone, upon hearing of
it, burst into a flood of tears. As he had been in arms
against her up to a week before, it can scarcely have
been a source of very poignant anguish. Probably he
felt that had he guessed the imminence of the event
he might have made better terms.

BROOCH,

XXXI.

THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS.

THIS was the last serious attempt on the part of
any individual Irish chieftain to rise against the power
of England. The next rebellion of which we shall
hear arose from perfectly different causes, and was
general rather than individual, grew indeed before its
conclusion to the larger and more imposing dimen-
sions of a civil war.

In one respect this six years' struggle was less pro-
ductive of results than either of the two previous ones.
At the end of it, Tyrone was still Tyrone ; still
the first of Irish subjects ; his earldom and his ances-
tral possessions were still his. Nay, on crossing a few
months later to England, and presenting himself to
the English Court, he was graciously received by the
new king, and seemed at first to stand in all respects
as if no rebellion had been planned by him, or so
nearly carried to a successful issue.

This state of things was a source, as may readily be
conceived, of boundless rage to every English officer
and official who had taken part in the late campaign.
To see " that damnable rebel Tyrone " apparently in
high honour caused them to rage and gnash their

TYRONE'S ENEMIES. 221

teeth. " How did I labour," cries one of them, " for
that knave's destruction ! I adventured perils by sea
and land ; went near to starving ; eat horseflesh in
Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth
in peace at those who did hazard their lives to destroy
him ! "

Sheriffs, judges, commissioners, all the new officials
who now began to hurry to the north, shared in
this sentiment, and all had their eyes set in wrathful
animosity upon Tyrone, all were bent in finding him
out in some new treason. That after all that had
happened he should end his days in peace and honour
was not inconceivable merely, but revolting. He
himself complained about this time that he could not
"drink a full carouse of sack but the State in a few
hours was advertised thereof/' It was, in fact, an impos-
sible situation. Tyrone was now sixty-two, and would
have been willing enough therefore, in all probability,
to rest and be thankful. It was impossible, he found,
for him to do so. He was harassed by spies, plunged
into litigation with regard to his seignorial rights, and
whatever case was tried the lawyers invariably found
for his antagonists. Rory O'Donnell, a brother of
Red Hugh, who had been created Earl of Tyrconnel by
James, was in a like case. Both were regarded with
detestation by every official in Ireland ; both had not
long before had a price set on their heads ; both, it
was resolved by all in authority, would, sooner or
later, therefore, begin to rebel again.

Whether they did so or not has never been satis-
factorily decided. The evidence on the whole goes to
prove that they did not. The air, however, was thick

222 THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS.

just then with plots, and in 1607, a mysterious and
anonymous document, of which Lord Howth was
reported to be the author, was found in the Dublin
Council Chamber, which hinted darkly at conspira-
cies and perils of various kinds to the State, in which
conspiracies Tyrone, it was equally darkly hinted,
was in some manner or other involved.

It was rather a poor plot, still it served its turn.
Tyrone received warning from his friends abroad that
he was about to be arrested, and so serious was the
peril deemed that a vessel was specially sent by them
to bring him away in safety. He at once communi-
cated with Tyrconnel, and after a short consultation
the two Earls with their families resolved to take
advantage of the opportunity and depart at once.
This at the time, and indeed generally, has been
construed into a proof of their guilt. It may have
been so, but, on the other hand, it may just as well
not have been. Had their innocence been purer
than alabaster or whiter than the driven snow they
were probably well advised under existing circum-
stances in not remaining to take their trial.

Right or wrong, with good reason or without good
reason, they went, and after various wanderings
reached Rome, where they were received with no
little honour. Neither, however, long survived their
exile. . Tyrconnel died the following year, and Tyrone
some eight years later, a sad, blind, broken-hearted
man.

Nothing could have been more convenient for the
Government than this departure. Under the circum-
stances, it meant, of course, a forfeiture of all their

FORFEITURE OF THE EARL'S ESTATES. 223

estates. Had the extent of territory which personally
belonged to the two exiles alone been confiscated,
the proceeding1, no doubt, would have been per-
fectly legitimate. Whatever had led to it, the fact
of their flight and consequent renouncement of
allegiance was undeniable, and the loss of their
estates followed almost as a matter of course. A
far more sweeping measure than this, however, was
resolved upon. The lawyers, under the direction of
the Dublin Government, so contrived matters as to
make the area forfeited by the two earls cover no less
a space than six entire counties, all of which were
escheated to the Crown, regardless of the rights of
a vast number of smaller tenants and sub-proprietors
against whom no plea of rebellion, recently at all
events could be urged ; a piece of injustice destined,
as will be seen, to bear tragic fruit a generation later.

The plan upon which this new plantation was
carried out was projected with the utmost care by the
lawyers, the Irish Government, and the king himself.
The former plantations in Munster were an acknow-
ledged failure, the reason assigned being the huge size
of the grants made to the undertakers. Many of
these resided in England, and merely drew their
rents, allowing Irish tenants to occupy the land.
This mistake was now to be avoided. Only tracts
that could be managed by a resident owner were to
be granted, and from these the natives were to be
entirely drawn. " As well," it was gravely stated,
" for their greater security, as to preserve the purity
of the English language."

The better to ensure this important result mar-

224 THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS.

riages were strictly forbidden between the native
Irish and the settlers, and in order to avoid that
ever- formidable danger the former were ordered to
remove themselves and their belongings bodily into
certain reserved lands set apart for them.

The person who took the most prominent part in
this undertaking was the well-known Sir John Davis,
a distinguished lawyer and writer, who has himself
left us a minute account of his own and his
colleagues' proceedings. That those proceedings
should have aroused some slight excitement and
dismay amongst the dispossessed owners was not,
perhaps, astonishing, even to those engaged in it.
In some instances, the proprietors even went the
length of bringing lawyers from Dublin, to prove
that their estates could not legally be forfeited
through the attainder of the earls, and to plead, more-
over, the king's recent proclamation which undertook
to secure to the inhabitants their possessions. In reply
to this, Sir John Davis and the other commissioners
issued another proclamation. "We published," he
says, "by proclamation in each county, what lands
were to be granted to British undertakers, what to
servitors, and what to natives, to the end that the
natives should remove from the precincts allotted to
the Britons, whereupon a clear plantation is to be
made of English and Scottish without Irish." With
regard to the rights of the king he is still more em-
phatic. " Not only," he says, " his Majesty may take
this course lawfully, but he is bound in conscience to
do so."

These arguments, and probably still more the evident

NOT UNSATISFIED IN REASON.

225

uselessness of any resistance, seem to have had their
effect The discomfited owners submitted sullenly,
and withdrew to the tracts allotted to them. In
Sir John Davis' own neat and incisive words, " The
natives seemed not unsatisfied in reason, though they
remained in their passions discontented, being grieved
to leave their possessions to strangers, which they had
so long after their manner enjoyed."

DOORWAY OF ST. CAEMIN'S CHURCH, INISMAIN, ARAN ISLES.

XXXII.

THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION.

IN 1613, it was resolved by the Government to
summon an Irish Parliament, for the purpose of
giving legality to their recent proceedings in Ulster,
and also to pass an Act of formal attainder upon the
two exiled earls.

The great difficulty felt by the executive was how to
secure an adequate Protestant majority. Even after
the recent large introduction of Protestants the great
mass of the freeholders, and nearly all the burgesses
in the towns were still Roman Catholics. In the
Upper House, indeed, the nineteen Protestant bishops
and five temporal lords who were Protestant, made
matters safe. The House of Commons, therefore,
was the rub. Carew and Sir John Davis set their
wits energetically to this problem. The new towns,
or rather agricultural forts, in Ulster were all con-
verted into Corporations, and each given the power
of returning two members. The Pale and the Lein-
ster towns, thou-gh loyal, were nearly all Catholic. In
the west, except at Athlone, there was " no hope,"
the president reported, "of any Protestants." From
some of the other garrison towns better things were

THE SPEAKER — PROTESTANT OR CATHOLIC. 22J

hoped for, still there was not a little alarm on the part
of the Government that the numbers might still come
short.

On the other side the Catholics were equally alive
to the situation, and equally keen to secure a triumph.
A belief prevailed, too, all over Ireland, that the object
of summoning this Parliament was to carry out
some sweeping act of confiscation, and this naturally
added to the excitement. For the first time in Irish
history a genuinely contested election took place.
Both parties strained every nerve, both felt their future
interests to depend upon the struggle. When at last
all the members were collected it was found that the
Government had a majority, though a narrow one, of
twenty- four. Barely, however, had Parliament assem-
bled, before a violent quarrel broke out over the elec-
tion of a speaker ; the Catholic party denouncing the
irregularity by means of which many of the elections
had been carried, and refusing therefore to consider
themselves bound by the decision of the majority. Sir
John Davis had been elected speaker by the suppor-
ters of the Government, but, during the absence of
the latter in the division lobby, the recusants placed
their own man, Sir John Everard, in the chair, and
upon the return of the others a hot scuffle ensued be-
tween the supporters of the two Sir Johns, each side
vehemently supporting the claims of its own candidate.
In the end, " Mr. Treasurer and Mr. Marshall, two
gentlemen of the best quality," according to a " Pro-
testant declaration " sent to England of the whole
occurrence, " took Sir John Davis by the arms, and
lifting him from the ground, • placed him in the chair

228 THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION.

upon Sir John Everard's lap, requiring the latter to
come forth of the chair ; which, he obstinately re-
fusing, Mr. Treasurer, the Master of the Ordinance,
and others, whose places were next the chair, laid
their hands gently upon him, and removed him out
of the chair, and placed Sir John Davis therein."

The gravity with which we are assured of the gentle-
ness of these proceedings is delightful. The recusants,
with Sir John Everard at their head, departed we are
further told " in most contentious manner " out of the
House. Being asked why they did not return, they
replied that " Those within the House are no House,
and the Speaker is no Speaker ; but we are the House,
and Sir John Everard is our Speaker." *

Not being able to be otherwise settled, the quarrel
was at last referred to the king, and representa-
tives of both sides went to England to plead their
cause. In the end twelve of the new elections were
found to have been so illegally carried that they had
perforce to be cancelled, but Sir John Davis was at
the same time confirmed in the Speakership.

After this delay the House at last got to work. A
formal Act of attainder was passed upon Tyrone,
Tyrconnel, and some of the other Ulster landowners.
Every portion of Ireland was next made into shireland,
and the last remnants of the Brehon law abolished.
Upon the other hand, the statutes of Kilkenny was at
length and finally repealed. Henceforth English and
Irish were alike to be admitted to plead their own
cause in the courts of law.

1 Lodges, " Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica," pp. 410-411.

XXXIII.

OLD AND NEW OWNERS.

THE zeal for Irish colonization had by no means
subsided after the Ulster settlement had been estab-
lished ; on the contrary, it was the favourite panacea
of the hour, especially in the eyes of the king himself.
After one such resounding success, why, it was asked,
not extend so evident a blessing to the rest of Ireland ?
" A commission to inquire into defective titles " was
set on foot, whose duty it was to collect evidence as to
the condition of estates, and to inquire into the titles
of owners. The pipe rolls in Dublin and the patents,
kept in the Tower of London were alike eagerly ran-
sacked, and title flaws found to be discoverable with the
most delightful facility. There was a strong feeling too
about this time in England that something good was
to be made of Ireland. When tens of thousands of
acres were to be had almost for the asking, who could
be so slow or so mean-spirited as to hang back from
doing so.

Something like a regular stampede of men ambi-
tious to call themselves undertakers, began to cross
over from the larger to the smaller island. Nor
was the Government anxious to check this spirited

230 OLD AND NEW OWNERS.

impulse. In Wexford alone over 60,000 acres had
been discovered by the lawyers to belong to the
king, and of these a large portion were now settled
with English undertakers. In Longford, Leitrim,
Wicklow, and many other parts of Leinster, it was
the same. Even where the older proprietors were
not dispossessed heavy fines were levied in return
for fresh grants. No proof of recent surrender or
former agreement was allowed to count, and so in-
geniously was the whole scheme carried out, and so
inextricable was the jungle of legal technicalities in
which it was involved, that what in reality was often
sheer confiscations sounded like the most equitable of
judicial arrangements.

The case of the Connaught landowners is particu-
larly characteristic, and as space dwindles rapidly,
may serve as an example of the rest. Nearly all
the Connaught gentry, native and Norman alike,
had surrendered their estates either to Elizabeth
or to her father, and had received them back again
upon new terms. Legal transfer, however, was so
little understood, and the times were so rough and
wild, that few had received patents, and title-deeds
were all but unknown. In James I.'s reign this
omission was rectified and patents duly made out,
for which the landowners paid a sum little short of
£30,000, equal to nearly £300,000 at the present day.
These new patents, however, by an oversight of the
clerks in Chancery, were neglected to be enrolled, and
upon this plea fresh ones were called for, and fresh
fees had to be paid by the landowners. Further it was
announced that owing to the omission — one over

DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE CATHOLICS. 2$l

which the owners, it is clear, had no control — all the
titles had become defective, and all the lands had
lapsed to the Crown. The other three provinces having
by this time received plantations, the Connaught
landowners were naturally not slow to perceive the use
that might be made of so awkward a technical flaw.
To appeal against the manifest injustice of the decision
was of little avail, but a good round sum of money
into the king's own hands was known to rarely come
amiss. They agreed accordingly to offer him the
same sum that would have fallen to his share had the
plantations been carried out. This was accepted and
another £ 10,000 paid, and the evil day thus for a
while, but only, as will be seen, for a while averted.

Charles's accession awakened a good many hopes
in Ireland, the Catholic party especially flattering
themselves that a king who was himself married to
one of their faith would be likely to show some favour
to his Catholic subjects. In this they found their
mistake, and an attempt to open a Catholic college in
Dublin was speedily put down by force. In other
directions a certain amount of leniency was, however,
extended to recusants, and Lord Falkland, who a
few years before had succeeded Sir Oliver St. John as
deputy, was a man of conspicuous moderation and
tolerance. In 1629, however, he resigned, worn out
like so many others before and after him by the diffi-
culties with which he had to contend, and not long
afterwards a man of very different temperament and
widely different theories of government came to
assume the reins.

XXXIV.

STRAFFORD.

IN 1632, Wentworth — better known as Strafford —
arrived in Ireland, prepared to carry out his motto of
" Thorough." Only three years before, he had been
one of the foremost orators in the struggle for the
Petition of Right. The dagger of Fenton had turned
him from an impassioned patriot and constitu-
tionalist into a vehement upholder of absolutism.
His revolt had been little more than a mask for his
hostility to the hated favourite Buckingham, and
when Buckingham's murder cleared the path to his
ambition, Wentworth passed, apparently without a
struggle, from the zealous champion of liberty to the
yet more zealous champion of despotic rule.

He arrived in Ireland as to a conquered country,
and proceeded promptly to act upon that under-
standing. His chief aim was to show that a parlia-
ment, properly managed, could be made not a
menace, but a tool in the hand of the king. With
this end he summoned an Irish one immediately
upon his arrival, and so managed the elections that
Protestants and Catholics should nearly equally
balance one another. Upon its assembling, he ordered

THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD, 164!.

234 STRAFFORD.

peremptorily that a subsidy of .£100,000, to cover the
debts to the Crown, should be voted. There would,
he announced, be a second session, during which
certain long-deferred " graces " and other demands
would be considered. The sum was obediently voted,
but the second session never came. The parliament
was abruptly dissolved by the deputy, and did not
meet again for nearly four years.

The Connaught landlords were the next whom he
took in hand. We have seen in the last chapter that
they had recently paid a large sum to the Crown, in
order to ward off the dangers of a plantation. This
did not satisfy Wentworth. Their titles were again
called into question. He swept down in person into
the province, with the commissioners of plantations
at his heels ; discovered, to his own complete satisfac-
tion, that all the titles of all the five western counties
were defective, and that, as a natural consequence, all
lapsed to the Crown. The juries of Mayo, Sligo,
and Roscommon were overawed into submission, but
the Galway jury were obstinate, and refused to dis-
possess the proprietors. Wentworth thereupon took
them back with him to Dublin, summoned them
before the Court of the Castle Chamber, where they
were sentenced to pay a fine of ^4,000 each, and the
sheriff £, i ooo, and to remain in prison until they had
done so. The unfortunate sheriff died in prison.
Lord Clanricarde, the principal Galway landlord, died
also shortly afterwards, of anxiety and mortification.
The others submitted, and were let off by the trium-
phant deputy with the surrender, in some cases, of
large portions of their estates, in others of heavy fines.

HIS IRON RULE. 235

By these means, and others too long to enter into
here, he contrived to raise the annual Irish . revenue to
a surplus of £60,000, with part of which he proceeded
to set on foot and equip an army for the king of
10,000 foot and 1,000 horse, ready to be 'marched
at a moment's notice. This part of the programme
was intended as a menace less against Ireland than
England. Charles was to be absolute in both islands,
and, to be so, his Irish subjects were to help him to
coerce his English ones.

Let us, however, be just. Strafford was a born
tyrant — worse, he was the champion of an absolutism
of the most odious type conceivable, one which, if
successful, would have been a death-blow to English
liberty. But he was also a born ruler. No petty
tyrants flourished under his sway. His hand was
like iron upon the plunderers, the pluralists, the
fraudulent officials, gorged with their ill-gotten booty
What he did, too, he did well. If he struck, he could
also protect. He ruthlessly suppressed the infant
woollen trade, believing that it might in time come
to be a rival to the English one, but he was the
founder of the linen trade, and imported Flemish
weavers to teach it, and the best flax-seed to
sow in the fields. He cleared the sea of the pirates
who swarmed along the coasts, and had recently
burnt the houses and carried off the inhabitants of
several villages. The king's authority once secured
he was anxious to secure to the mass of the people,
Catholic as well as Protestant, a just and impartial
administration of the law. No one in Ireland, he
was resolved, should tyrannize except himself.

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HIS TREATMENT OF THE IRISH CLERGY. 237

He and Laud, the primate, were close allies, and
both were bent upon bringing the Church of Ireland
to an absolute uniformity with that of England, and,
with this object, Wentworth set a Court of High Com-
mission to work to root out the Presbyterian ministers
and to suppress, as far as possible, dissent. The Irish
bishops and episcopalian clergy were, with hardly an
exception, Low Churchmen, with a leaning to Calvin-
ism, and, upon these also his hand was heavy. His
regard for the Church by no means stood in his way
either in his dealings with individual churchmen.
He treated the Primate Ussher — one of the most vene-
rated names in all Irish history — with marked con-
tempt ; he rated the Bishop of Killaloe upon one
occasion like a dog, and told him that " he deserved
to have his rochet pulled over his ears ; " boasting
afterwards, to his correspondent, of how effectually he
had "warmed his old sides."

In another letter to Laud, we get a graphic and
rather entertaining account of his dealings with Con-
vocation. The Lower House, it seems, had appointed
a select committee, which had drawn up a book of
canons upon the lines of what were known as the
"Nine Articles of Lambeth." Wentworth was furious.
" Instantly," he says, " I sent for Dean Andrews, that
reverend clerk, who sat, forsooth, in the chair at this
committee, and required him to bring along the
aforesaid book of canons ; this he obeyed, . . . but
when I came to open the book, I confess I was not
so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told
him certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ana-
nias had sat in the chair at that committee, and sure

238 STR AFFORD.

I was that Ananias had been there in spirit if not in
body." *

The unhappy Ananias naturally submitted at once
to the terrible deputy, and, although Archbishop
Ussher and most of the bishops defended the attacked
canons, Wentworth carried his point by a sheer exercise
of power. Throwing the list of canons already drawn
out aside, he drew up another of his own composi-
tion, and forced the Convocation to accept it. " There
were some hot spirits, sons of thunder, amongst them,"
he tells Laud boastfully, " who moved that they
should petition me for a free synod, but, in fine, they
could not agree among themselves who should put
the bell about the cat's neck, and so this likewise
vanished." 2 The cat, in truth, was a terrible one to
bell!

But the career of the master of Ireland was nearing
its end. By the beginning of 1640 the Scotch were
up in arms, and about to descend in force upon
England. The English Puritans, too, were assuming
a hostile attitude. Civil war was upon the point of
breaking out. Charles summoned Wentworth over
in hot haste from Ireland, and it was decided between
them that the newly-organized Irish forces were to
be promptly employed against the Scotch rebels.
With this purpose Wentworth — now with the long-
desired titles of Earl of Stratford and Lord-Lieu-
tenant -of Ireland — hurried back to make the final
arrangements. Fresh subsidies were obtained from
the ever-subservient Irish parliament ; more recruits

1 Earl of Strafford's " Letters and Despatches," vol. i. p. 342. N

2 Ibid.

HIS EXECUTION.

239

were hastily summoned, and came in readily ; the
army was put under the command of the young
Earl of Ormond, and Strafford once more returned
to England. He did so only to find all his calcula-
tions upset. A treaty had been made in his absence
with the Scots ; the Long Parliament had assembled,
and the fast-gathering storm was about to break in
thunder over his own head. He was impeached.
Witness after witness poured over from Ireland, all
eager to give their evidence. Representatives even
of the much-aggrieved Connaught landlords — though
their wrongs did not perhaps count for much in the
great total — were there to swell the tide. He was
tried for high treason, condemned and executed. In
England the collapse of so great and so menacing
a figure was a momentous event. In Ireland it
must have seemed as the very fall of Lucifer himself!

SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL.

XXXV.

'FORTY-ONE.

STRAFFORD's fall and death would alone have
rendered this year, 1641, a memorable one. in Irish
history. Unhappily it was destined to be made yet
more so ; few years, indeed, in that long, dark bead-
roll are perhaps as memorable, both from what it
brought forth at the time, and, still more, from what
was afterwards to follow from it.

The whole country, it must be remembered, was
in a state of the wildest and most irrepressible
excitement. The fall of such a ruler as Strafford —
one under whose iron will it had for years lain as
in a vice — would alone have produced a consider-
able amount of upheaval and confusion. The army
collected by him, and mainly recruited by Catholics,
was regarded with strong disfavour both by Irish Pro-
testants and by the English Parliament, and Charles,
much against his will, had been forced to disband it,
and the arms had been stored in Dublin Castle. The
men, however, remained, and among the leading
Irish as well as English royalists there was a strong
desire that they should be kept together, so as to
serve if required in the fast nearing struggle.

THE CATHOLIC RISING. 241

Nor was this all. Strafford's persecution of the
Presbyterians had done its work, and the feeling
between them and the Irish Church party had been
greatly embittered. Amongst the Catholics, too, the
most loyal even of the gentry had been terror-stricken
by his confiscations. No one knew how long his
property would remain his own, or upon what pre-
tence it might not next be taken from him. Add to
these the long-gathering passion of the dispossessed
clans in the north, and that floating element of dis-
affection always ready to stir, and it will be seen
that the materials for a rebellion were ready laid,
and needed only a spark to ignite them.

As usually happens in rebellions the plans of the
more prudent were thwarted by the impetuosity of the
more violent spirits. While Ormond, Antrim, and
the barons of the Pale were communicating with the
king, and considering what were the best steps to
take, a plot had been formed without them, and was
now upon the point of exploding.

Two men, Rory or Roger O'Moore, one of the
O'Moores of Leix, and Sir Phelim O'Neill, a con-
nection of the Tyrones, were its main movers, and
were joined by Lord Maguire, a youth of about
twenty-two, Hugh McMahon, the Bishop of Clogher,
and a few other gentlemen, belonging chiefly to the
septs of the north. The plan was a very comprehen-
sive one. They were to seize Dublin Castle, which
was known to be weakly defended ; get out the arms
and powder, and redistribute them to the disbanded
troops ; at the same time, seize all the forts and gar-
rison towns in the north ; turn all the Protestant

242 'FORTY-ONE.

settlers adrift — though it was at first stipulated with-
out killing or otherwise injuring them — take possession
of all the country houses, and make all who declined
to join in the rising prisoners.

Never, too, was plot more nearly successful. October
the 23rd was the day fixed, and up to the very evening
before no hint of what was intended had reached the
Lords Justices. By the merest chance, and by an almost
inconceivable piece of carelessness on the part of the
conspirators, it was divulged to a man called Conolly,
a Presbyterian convert, who went straight and reported
it to Sir William Parsons. The latter at first declined to
believe in it, but, Conolly persisting in his story, steps
were taken to strengthen the defences. The guard
was doubled ; Lord Maguire and Hugh McMahon
were arrested at daybreak next morning ; the rest,
finding that their stroke had missed, fled with their
followers.

If this part of the rising failed, the other portions,
unhappily, were only too successful. The same day
the Protestant settlers in Armagh and Tyrone, un-
suspicious of any danger, were suddenly set upon by
a horde of armed or half-armed men, dragged out
of their houses, stripped to the skin, and driven,
naked and defenceless, into the cold. No one dared
to take them in, every door was shut in their faces,
and though at first no actual massacre seems to have
been intended, hundreds perished within the first
few days of exposure, or fell dead by the roadside
of famine and exhaustion.

Sir Phelim O'Neill — a drunken ruffian for whom
even the most patriotic historian finds it hard to say

SIR PHELIM O'NEILL. 243

a redeeming word — was here the ringleader. On the
same day — the 23rd of October — he got possession
of the fort of Charlemont, the strongest position in
the new plantation, by inviting himself to dinner
with Lord Caulfield, the governor, and suddenly
seizing him prisoner. Dungannon, Mountjoy, and
several of the other forts, were also surprised and taken.
Enniskillen, however, was saved by its governor, Sir
William Cole, and Derry, Coleraine, and Carrick-
fergus, had also time fortunately to shut their gates,
and into these as many of the terrified settlers as
could reach them crowded.

These were few, however, compared to those who
could find no such haven of refuge. Sir Phelim
O'Neill, mad with excitement, and intoxicated with
the sudden sense of power, hounded on his excited
and undisciplined followers to commit every conceiv-
able act of cruelty and atrocity. Disappointed by the
failure of the more important part of the rising, and
furious at the unsuccess of his attempts to capture
the defended towns, he turned like a bloodhound
upon those unfortunates who were within his grasp.
Old Lord Caulfield was murdered in Sir Phelim's
house by Sir Phelim's own foster-brother ; Mr. Blaney,
the member for Monaghan, was hanged ; and some
hundreds of the inhabitants of Armagh, who had
surrendered on promise of their lives, were massacred
in cold blood. As for the more irregular murders
committed in the open field upon helpless, terrified
creatures, powerless to defend themselves, they are too
numerous to relate, and there is happily no purpose to
be gained in repeating the harrowing details. The

244 'FORTY-ONE.

effect produced by the condition of the survivors
upon those who saw them arrive in Dublin and else-
where— spent, worn out, frozen with cold, creeping
along on hands and knees, and all but at the point
of death — was evidently ineffaceable, and communi-
cates itself vividly to us as we read their descriptions.

The effect of cruelty, too, is to produce more
cruelty ; of horrors like these to breed more horrors ;
till the very earth seems covered with the hideous
brood, and the most elementary instincts of humanity
die away under their poisonous breath. So it was
now in Ireland. The atrocities committed upon one
side were almost equalled, though not upon so large
a scale by the other. One of the first actions per-
formed by a Scotch force, sent over to Carrickfergus
by the king, was to sally out like demons and merci-
lessly slaughter some thirty Irish families living in
Island Magee, who had nothing whatever to say to the
rising. In Wicklow, too, Sir Charles Coote, sent to
suppress a disturbance amongst the O'Byrnes and
O'Tooles, perpetrated atrocities the memory of which
still survives in the region, and which, for cold-
blooded, deliberate horror almost surpass those com-
mitted in the north. The spearing by his soldiery
of infants which had hardly left the breast he himself
openly avowed, and excused upon the plea that if
allowed to survive they would grow up to be men
and women, and that his object was to extirpate the
entire brood.

Here and there a faint gleam falls upon the
blackened page. Bedell, the Bishop of Kilmore,
who had won the reverence even of his fiercest op-

CARNAGE AND OUTRAGE. 245

ponents, was allowed to remain free and undisturbed
in the midst of the worst scenes of carnage and
outrage ; and when a few months later he died,
was followed weeping to the grave by many who had
been foremost in the work of horror. As to the
number of those who actually perished, either from
exposure, or by the hands of assassins, it has been
so variously estimated that it seems to be all but
impossible to arrive at anything like exact statistics.
The tale was black enough as it realjy stood, but
it was made blacker still by rumour and exaggeration.
The real number of the victims grew to tenfold in
the telling. Four thousand murdered swelled to forty
thousand ; and eight thousand who died of exposure,
to eighty thousand. Even now every fresh historian
sets the sum total down at a different figure. Take
it, however, at the very lowest, it is still a horrible one.
Let us shut our eyes and pass on. The history of
those days remains in Carlyle's words, " Not a picture,
but a huge blot : an indiscriminate blackness, one
which the human memory cannot willingly charge
itself with ! "

XXXVI.

THE WATERS SPREAD.

So far the rising had been merely local. It was
now to assume larger dimensions. Although shocked
at the massacre, and professing an eager desire to
march in person to punish its perpetrators, Charles'
chief aim was really that terms should be made with
the leaders, in order that their troops might be made
available for service in England.

In Dublin courts-martial were being rapidly estab-
lished. All Protestants were given arms ; all strangers
were ordered to quit the city on pain of death ; Sir
Francis Willoughby was given the command of the
castle ; Sir Charles Coote made military governor
of the city. Ormond was anxious to take the field
in the north before the insurrection spread further,
before they had time, as he said, to " file their pikes."
This the Lords Justices however refused to allow. They
were waiting for orders from the English Parliament,
with which they were in close alliance, and were per-
fectly willing to let the revolt spread so that the area
of confiscated lands might be the greater.

None of the three southern provinces had as yet risen.

THE GENERAL UPRISING. 247

in the Pale the Anglo-Norman families were warm
in their expressions of loyalty, and appealed earnestly
to the Lords Justices to summon a parliament, and
to distribute arms for their protection. This last
was refused, and although a parliament assembled it
was instantly prorogued, and no measures were taken
to provide for the safety of the well-disposed. Early
in December of the same year Lords Fingal, Gormans-
town, Dunsany, and others of the principal Pale peers,
with a large number of the local gentry, met upon
horseback, at Swords, in Meath, to discuss their future
conduct. The opposition between the king and Par-
liament was daily growing fiercer. The Lords Justices
were the nominees of Parliament ; to revolt against
them was not, therefore, it was argued, to revolt against
the king. Upon December I7th they met again in
yet larger numbers, upon the hill of Crofty, where
they were met by some of the leaders of the north.
Rory O'Moore, — a man of no little address, who
was personally clear of the worst stain of the
massacres, and who had lately issued a proclamation
declaring that he and his followers were in arms, not
against Charles, but the Parliament — was the principal
speaker on this occasion, and his arguments appear to
have decided the waverers. They agreed unanimously
to throw in their lot with their co-religionists. From
that moment the rising had become a national one.
The whole island was soon in arms. Munster followed
Leinster, and Connaught shortly afterwards followed
Munster. Lords Thomond, Clanricarde, and a few
others stood out, but by the end of the year, with the
exception of Dublin, Drogheda, Cork, Galway, Ennis-

248 THE WATERS SPREAD.

killen, Derry, and some few other towns, all Ireland
was in the hands of the rebels.

Even then the Lords Justices seem to have but little
realized the gravity of the crisis. They occupied their
time chiefly in preparing indictments, and cheerfully
calculating the fast-growing area of land open to con-
fiscation. In vain Ormond entreated to be allowed to
proceed against Sir Phelim O'Neill. They steadily
declined to allow him to leave the neighbourhood of
Dublin.

The northern rising had by this time nearly worn
itself out by its own excesses. Sir Phelim's efforts
to take Drogheda were ludicrously unavailing, and he
had been forced to take his ragged rabble away
without achieving anything. Regarded as an army
it had one striking peculiarity — there was not a
single military man in it ! Sir Phelim himself had
bee'n bred to the law ; Rory O'Moore was a self-taught
insurgent who had never smelt powder. They had
no arms, no officers, no discipline, no organization of
any kind ; what was more, the men were deserting in
all directions. In the south there was no one either
to take the command. The new levies were willing
enough to fight, but there was no one to show them
how. The insurrection seemed in a fair way of dying
out from sheer want of leadership.

Suddenly reinforcements arrived in two directions
almost at the same time. Owen O'Neill — better
known as Owen Roe — an honourable and gallant
man, who had served with much distinction upon the
Continent, landed in Donegal, accompanied by about
a hundred French-Irish officers. He instantly took

THE CATHOLIC CONFEDERACY. 249

*

the command of the disorganized and fast-dissolving
northern levies ; superseded the incompetent Sir
Phelim, who from that moment fell away into con-
tempt and impotence ; suppressed all disorders, and
punished, as far as possible, those who had been fore-
most in the work of blood, expressing at the same
time his utter detestation of the horrors which had
hitherto blackened the rising.

Almost at the same moment Colonel Preston, a
brother of Lord Gormanstown, and an officer who
had also served with credit in the European wars,
landed in the south, bringing with him a store of
ammunition and field artillery, and between four and
five hundred exiled Irish officers. The two forces
thereupon began to assume a comparatively organized
appearance. Both, however, were so far perfectly inde-
pendent of each other, and both openly and avowedly
hostile to the king.

To effect a union between these northern and south-
ern insurgents a meeting was summoned at Kilkenny
in October, 1642, consisting of over two hundred
Roman Catholic deputies, nearly all the Irish Roman
Catholic bishops, many of the clergy, and some four-
teen peers. A council was formed of which Lord
Mountgarret was appointed President. Owen Roe
O'Neill was at the same time confirmed in the com-
mand of the northern forces, and Colonel Preston in
that of the southern. The war was declared to be a
Catholic one, to be known henceforward as the
Catholic Confederacy, and between old Irish and
Anglo-Irish there was to be no difference.

Charles's great aim was now to persuade the Con-

250 THE WATERS SPREAD.

federates to unite with one another in his support.
The chief difficulty was a religious one. The Kilkenny
Council stood out for the restoration of the Catholic
Church in all its original privileges. This, for his own
sake — especially in the then excited state of feeling in
England — Charles dared not grant, neither would
Ormond abet him in doing so. Between the latter
and the Catholic peers there was, however, a com-
plete understanding, while between him and the
Dublin Lords Justices there was an all but complete
breach.

The King decided upon ^.coupde main. He dismissed
the Lords Justices, and ordered several of the more
Puritan members of the Privy Council to be tried for
treason. The result was a rapid exodus of nearly the
whole governing body to England. Early in 1644
Ormond was made Lord-deputy, and a truce of a
year was entered into with the Confederates. Only
the extravagance of the latter's demands now stood
in the way of a complete union.

XXXVII.

CIVIL WAR.

THE passionate excitement which the news of
the Ulster massacre had awakened in England
seems to have deepened, rather than diminished,
as time went on, and the details became more
known. Nothing that has happened within living
memory can be even approximately compared to it,
though, perhaps, those who are old enough to
remember the sensations awakened by the news of
the Indian Mutiny will be able most nearly to realize
the wrath and passionate desire of revenge which rilled
every Protestant breast. That the circumstances of
the case were not taken into consideration was almost
inevitable. Looking back with calmer vision — though
even now a good deal of fog and misconception seems
to prevail upon the subject — we can see that some such
outbreak was all but inevitable ; might have been,
indeed ought to have been, foreseen. A wildly-
excitable population driven from the land which they
and their fathers had held from time immemorial,
confined to a narrow and, for the most part, a worth-
less tract ; seeing others in possession of these " fat
lands " which they still regarded as their own — exiled

252 CIVIL WAR.

to make room for planters of another race and
another faith — what, in the name of sense or reason,
was to be expected except what happened ? That
the very instant protection was withdrawn the hour for
retribution would be felt to have struck. The un-
happy Protestant colonists were absolutely guiltless
in the matter. They were simply the victims, as the
earlier proprietors had been the victims before them.
The wrongs that had been wrought thirty years
earlier by Sir John Davis and the Dublin lawyers had
been wiped out in their unoffending blood.

This point is so important to realize, and the whole
rising has so often been described as a purely religious
and fanatical one, that it is worth dwelling upon it a
minute or two longer. It was a rising, unquestionably,
of a native Roman Catholic community against an
introduced Protestant one, and the religious element>
no doubt, counted for something— though it is not
easy to say for how much — in the matter. In any
case it was the smallest least vital part of the long
gathered fury which resulted in that deed of ven-
geance. The rising was essentially an agrarian one —
as almost every Irish rising has been before and
since — and the fact that the two rival creeds found
themselves face to face was little more than a very
unfortunate accident. Could the plantations of
James the First's time have been formed exclu-
sively of English or Scotch Roman Catholics, we
have no reason, and certainly no right to conclude
that the event would have been in any way different,
or that the number of those slaughtered would have
been reduced by even a single victim.

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE CONFEDERATES. 253

It was not, however, to be expected that the
English Protestants of that day would realize this.
It is not always fully realized even yet. The heat
awakened by that ruthless slaughter, that merciless
driving away of hundreds of innocent women and chil-
dren, the natural pity for the youth and helplessness of
many of the victims has lasted down to our own time.
Even to us the outrage is a thousand-fold more vivid
than the provocation which led to it. How much
more then to the English Protestants of that day?
To them it was simply a new massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew ; an atrocity which the very amplest and bloodiest
vengeance would still come far short of expiating.

It is easy to see that any negotiation with those
implicated in a deed which had produced so widespread
a feeling of horror was a proceeding fraught with peril
to the royal cause. Anger does not discriminate, and
to the Protestants of England, North and South, old
Irish, and Anglo-Irish, honourable gentlemen of the
Pale, and red-handed rebels of Ulster, were all alike
guilty. Nor was this Charles's only difficulty. The
Confederates declined to abate a jot of their terms.
The free exercise of the Catholic religion, an in-
dependent Irish parliament, a general pardon, and
a reversal of all attainders were amongst their con-
ditions, and they would not take less. These Ormond
dared not agree to. Had he done so every Protestant
in Ireland, down to his own soldiery, would have gone
over in a body to the Parliament. He offered what
he dared, but the Irish leaders would listen to no com-
promise. They knew the imminence of the situation
as well as he did, and every fresh royal defeat, the

254 CIVIL WAR.

news of which reached Ireland, only made them stand
out the firmer.

Charles cut the knot in his own fashion. Tired of
Ormond's discretion and Ormond's inconvenient
sense of honour, he secretly sent over Edward
Somerset, Earl of Glamorgan, to make terms with
the Confederates, who, excited at finding themselves
the last hope and mainstay of an embarrassed king
stood out for higher and higher conditions. The Plan-
tation lands were to be given back : full and free
pardon was to be granted to all ; Mass was to be
said in all the churches. To these terms and every-
thing else required, Glamorgan agreed, and the Con-
federates, thereupon, agreed to despatch a large force,
when called upon to do so, to England, and in the
meantime to make sham terms with Ormond, keeping
him in the dark as to this secret compact.

It was not long a secret. Ormond seems to have
had some suspicions of it from the beginning, and an
incident which presently occurred made suspicion cer-
tainty. The town of Sligo had been captured by the
parliamentary troops under Coote,and in October, 1645,
an attempt was made to recapture it by a party of Irish
under a fighting prelate, the Roman Catholic Arch-
bishop of Tuam. In the struggle which ensued the
Archbishop was killed, and upon his body was found
a copy of the secret treaty which was straightway
despatched by Coote to London.

It awakened a sensation hardly less than that with
which the news of the massacre itself had been re-
ceived. It was the one thing still wanting to damage
the royal cause. Charles, it is true, denied it stoutly,

DEFEAT OF THE PROTESTANTS. 255

and the English royalists tried to accept the denial.
The Irish ones knew better. Ormond, whose own
honour was untouched, did what he could to save his
king's. The Confederates, however, admitted it openly,
and Glamorgan, after suffering a short and purely
fictitious imprisonment, remained in Ireland to carry
out his master's orders.

The already crowded confusion of the scene
there had lately been added to by a new actor.
Rinucini, Archbishop of Fermo, had been despatched
by Pope Innocent X. as his nuncio, and at once
threw himself into the struggle. To him it narrowed
itself to one point. The moment, he felt, had now
come for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion
in Ireland, and if possible for its union with one of
the Catholic Powers of Europe, and in order to
achieve this object, his great aim was to hinder, if
possible, anything like a reconciliation between the
Catholic insurgents and the king.

Meanwhile, peace had been made in England.
Charles was a prisoner, and the final acts of that
drama in which he plays so strangely mixed a part
were shortly to be enacted. In Ireland there was no
pretence at peace. On the contrary, it was only then
that hostilities seem really to have been carried on
with vigour. At a battle fought upon June 4, 1646,
near Benturb, Owen O'Neill had defeated Munroe and
his Scottish forces with great slaughter, and from that
moment the whole north was in his power. In the
south Rinucini was rushing from town to town and
pulpit to pulpit, fiercely arousing all the Catholic
animosity of the country against both English parties
alike. In this he was supported by Owen O'Neill,

256 CIVIL WAR.

who, with his victorious army, hastened south to meet
him. Together the chief and the legate marched
in September of the same year into Kilkenny ; took
possession of the Council Chamber ; flung the Mode-
rates assembled there, including old Lord Mountgarret
and the rest of the Council, into prison. Ormond
was in Dublin, helpless to meet this new combination.
No orders came from England. The royal cause
seemed to be hopelessly lost. All Ireland was swarm-
ing with the troops of the insurgents. Lord Inchiquin,
who had for a while declared for the king, had now
gone over to the Parliament. O'Neill and the legate's
army was daily gathering strength. It needed but
a little more energy on their part and Dublin itself,
with all its helpless crowd of fugitives, must fall into
their hands.

In this dilemma Ormond came to a resolution.
To throw in his lot with Rinucini and the rebels of
the north, stained as the latter were in his eyes with
innocent blood, was impossible. Even had they been
disposed to combine heartily with him for the royal
cause he could hardly have done so ; as it was there
was barely a pretence of any such intention. If
Charles could effect his escape and would put himself
in their hands, then, indeed, they said they would
support him. In that case, however, it would have
been as king of Ireland rather than England. Or-
mond could not and would not stoop to any such
negotiations. He wrote to the English Parliament
offering to surrender Dublin into their hands, and to
leave the country. The offer was accepted, and a
month later he had relinquished the impossible post,
and joined the other escaped Royalists in France.

XXXVIII.

THE CONFUSION DEEPENS.

THE indescribable confusion of aims and parties in
Ireland begins at this point to take even more rapid
and perplexing turns. That " poor panther Inchi-
quin," as one of his opponents derisively calls him,
who had already made one bound from king to Par-
liament, now, upon some fresh offence, bounded back
again, and made overtures to Preston and the Mode-
rates. Rinucini, whose only policy was to hinder any
union between the Catholics and Royalists, thereupon
fled to O'Neill, and together they opposed the Mode-
rates tooth and nail. The latter were now seriously
anxious to make terms with the Royalists. The king's
trial was beginning, and his peril served to consoli-
date all but the most extreme. Ormond himself
returned late in 1648 from France ; Prince Rupert
arrived early the following year with a small fleet of
ships off Kinsale, and every day brought crowds of
loyal gentlemen to Ireland as to a final vantage
ground upon which to try a last desperate throw for
the royal cause.

In Dublin the command, upon Ormond's surrender,
had been given by the Parliament to Colonel Michael

258 THE CONFUSION DEEPENS.

Jones, a Puritan officer, who had greatly distinguished
himself in the late war. The almost ludicrously in-
volved state into which things had got is seen by the
fact that Jones, though himself the leader of the
Parliamentary forces, struck up at this juncture a tem-
porary alliance with O'Neill, and instructed Monk
who was in the north, to support him. The king's
death brought all the Royalists, and most of the more
moderate rebels into line at last. Rinucini, feeling
that whatever happened, his project of a separate Ire-
land had become impossible, fled to Italy. Even
O'Neill, finding that his alliance with Jones was not
prospering, and that the stricter Puritans declined
with horror the bare idea of holding any communica-
tion with him or his forces, gave in his adhesion.
Old Irish and Anglo-Irish, Protestant and Catholic,
North and South, all at last were in arms for the king.
The struggle had thus narrowed itself. It was

oo

now practically between Dublin, commanded by
Jones, the Parliamentary general, upon one side, and
all Ireland under Ormond and the now united Con-
federates on the other. Cromwell, it was known, was
preparing for a descent upon Ireland, and had issued
liberal offers of the forfeited Irish lands to all who
would aid him in the enterprise. He had first, how-
ever, to land, and there was nowhere that he could do
so excepting at Dublin or Londonderry. All the
efforts therefore of the Royalists were concentrated
upon taking the capital before it became the starting-
point of a new campaign. Marching hastily from
Kilkenny, Ormond established himself at a place
called Baggotrath, near Rathmines, and close to the

JAMES, DUKE OF ORMOND.
(From an engraving by White, after a picture by Kneller. )

260 THE CONFUSION DEEPENS.

walls of the town. Two nights after his arrival he sent
forward a body of men under Colonel Purcell to try
and effect a surprise. Jones, however, was on the
alert ; drove Purcell back, and, following him with
all the men at his command, fell upon Ormond's
camp, where no proper watch was being kept. The
surprise was thus completely reversed. Six thousand
of the confederate troops were killed or forced to
surrender, and Ormond, with the remainder, had to
fall back upon Kilkenny.

The battle of Baggotrath does not figure amongst
the more famous battles of this period, but it was cer-
tainly the turning-point of the Irish campaign. With
his crippled forces, Ormond was unable again to take
the field, and Jones was therefore left in undisputed
possession of Dublin. A week later, in August, 1649,
Cromwell had landed there with 12,000 troops at his
back.

XXXIX.

CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

CROMWELL had hardly set foot upon Irish soil
before he took complete control of the situation.
The enterprise, in his own eyes and in those of many
who accompanied him, wore all the sacred hue of a
crusade. " We are come," he announced, solemnly,
upon his arrival in Dublin, " to ask an account of the
innocent blood that hath been shed, and to endeavour
to bring to an account all who, by appearing in arms,
shall justify the same."

Three thousand troops, the flower of the English
cavaliers, with some of the Royalists of the Pale —
none of whom, it may be said, had anything to say
to the Ulster massacres — had been hastily thrown by
Ormond into Drogheda, under Sir Arthur Ashton, a
gallant Royalist officer; and to Drogheda, accordingly
in September Cromwell marched. Summoned to
yield, the garrison refused. They were attacked, and
fought desperately, driving back their assailants at the
first assault. At the second, a breach was made in
the walls, and Ashton and his force were driven
into the citadel. " Being thus entered," Cromwell's
despatch to the Parliament runs, " we refused them

262 CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

quarter. I believe we put to the sword the whole
number of the defendents. I do not think thirty
escaped. Those that did are in safe custody for the
Barbadoes. ... I wish," he adds, a little later in the
same despatch, " all honest hearts may give the glory
of this to God alone."

From Drogheda, the Lord-General turned south
to Wexford. Here an equally energetic defence
was followed by an equally successful assault, and
this also by a similar drama of slaughter. " There
was lost of the enemy," he himself writes, " not many
less than two thousand ; and, I believe, not twenty
of yours from first to last." The soldiers, he goes on
to say, " got a very good booty in this place." Of
" the former inhabitants . . . most of them are run
away, and many of them killed in this service. It
were to be wished that some honest people would
come and plant here." *

The grim candour of these despatches needs no
comment. We see the whole situation with that
vividness which only a relation at first hand ever gives.
The effect of these two examples was instantaneous.
Most of the other towns surrendered upon the first
summons. The Irish army fell back in all direc-
tions. An attempt was made to save Kilkenny, but
after a week's defence it was surrendered. The same
thing happened at Clonmel, and within a few months
of his arrival nearly every strong place, except Water-
ford and Limerick, were in the Lord-General's hands.

That Cromwell, from his own point of view, was
justified in these proceedings, and that he held him-

1 " Cromwell's Letters and Speeches " — Carlyle.

HIS DEPARTURE FOR ENGLAND. 263

self — even when slaughtering English Royalists in
revenge for the acts of Irish rebels — a divinely-ap-
pointed agent sent to execute justice upon the un-
godly, there can be little doubt. As regards ordinary
justice his conduct was exemplary. Unlike most
of the armies that had from time to time ravaged
Ireland, he allowed no disorder. His soldiers were
forbidden by proclamation to plunder, and were
hanged, " in ropes of authentic hemp," as Carlyle
remarks, when they did so. The merciless slaughter
of two entire garrisons is a hideous deed, and a deed,
too, which appeals with peculiar force to the popular
imagination. As compared to many acts perpetrated
from time to time in Ireland, it seems, if one ex-
amines it coolly, to fade into comparative whiteness,
and may certainly be paralleled elsewhere. A far
deeper and more ineffaceable stain rests — as will be
seen in another chapter — upon Cromwell's rule in
Ireland ; one, moreover, not so readily justified by
custom or any grim necessities of warfare.

The final steps by which the struggle was crushed
out were comparatively tedious. Cromwell's men
were attacked by that " country sickness " which
seems at that time to have been inseparable from
Irish campaigns. Writing from Ross in November, he
says, " I scarce know one officer amongst us who has
not been sick." His own presence, too, was urgently
required in England, so that he was forced before long
to set sail, leaving the completion of the campaign in
the hands of others.

In the Royalist camp, the state of affairs was mean-
while absolutely desperate. The Munster colonists

5164 CROMWELL IN IRELAND.

had gone over almost to a man to the enemy. The
" panther Inchiquin " had taken another bound in
the same direction. The quarrels between Ormond
and the old Irish party had grown bitterer than
ever. The hatred of the extreme Catholic party
towards him appears to have been if anything rather
deeper than their hatred to Cromwell, and all the
recent disasters were charged by them to his want of
generalship. The young king had been announced
at one moment to be upon the point of arriving in
person in Ireland. " One must go and die there, for
it is shameful to live elsewhere ! " he is reported to
have cried, with a depth of feeling very unlike his
usual utterances. He got as far as Jersey, but there
paused. Ireland under Cromwell's rule was not
exactly a pleasant royal residence, and, on the whole,
he appears to have thought it wiser to go no further.

His signature, a year later, of the Covenant, in
return for the Scotch allegiance, brought about a final
collapse of the always thinly cemented pact in Ire-
land. The old Catholic party thereupon broke wholly
away from Ormond, and after a short struggle he
was again driven into exile. From this time forward,
there was no longer a royal party of any sort left in
the country.

Under Hugh O'Neill, a cousin of Owen Roe, who
— fortunately, perhaps, for himself — had died shortly
after Cromwell's arrival, the struggle was carried on
for some time longer. As in later times, Limerick was
one of the last places to yield. Despite the evident
hopelessness of the struggle, Hugh O'Neill and his
half-starved men held it with a courage which awoke

SURRENDER OF GALWAY.

265

admiration even amongst the Cromwellians. When
it was surrendered the Irish officers received per-
mission to take service abroad. Galway, with a few
other towns and castles, which still held out, now
surrendered. The eight years' civil war was at last
over, and nothing remained for the victors to do but
to stamp out the last sparks, and call upon the sur-
vivors to pay the forfeit

ST. COLUMBA'S ORATORY, KELLS.

XL.

CROMWELL'S METHODS.

THE total loss of life during those weary eight
years of war and anarchy has been estimated at no
less than six hundred thousand lives, and there seems
to be no reason to think that these figures are exag-
gerated. Whereas in 1641 the population of Ireland
was nearly one and a half millions, at the end of 1649
it was considerably under one. More than a third,
therefore, of the entire population had disappeared
bodily.

Nor were the survivors left in peace to bind up
their wounds and mourn their slain. In England,
once the fighting was over, and the swords sheathed,
there was little desire to carry the punishment further;
and the vanquished were, for the most part, able to
retire in more or less melancholy comfort to their
homes. In Ireland the reverse was the case. There
the struggle had been complicated by a bitterness
unknown elsewhere, and had aroused a keen and
determined thirst for vengeance, one which the ces-
sation of hostilities only seemed to stimulate into
greater vehemence.

The effect, especially amongst the Puritans, of the

HIS SCHEME OF EVICTION. 267

Ulster massacres, far from dying out, had grown
fiercer and bitterer with every year. Now that the
struggle was over, that Ireland lay like an inert thing
in the hands of her victors, her punishment, it was
resolved, should begin. Had that punishment fallen
only on the heads of those who could be proved to
have had any complicity in that deed of blood there
would not have been a word to say. Sir Phelim
O'Neill was dragged from the obscurity to which ever
since the coming of Owen Roe he had been consigned,
tried in Dublin, and hanged — with little regret even
from his own side. Lord Mayo, who had taken a
prominent part in the rising, and was held responsible
for a horrible massacre perpetrated at Shrule Bridge,
near Tuam, was shot in Con naught. Lord Muskerry
was tried, and honourably acquitted. Other trials
took place, chiefly by court-martial, and though some
of these appear to have been unduly pressed, on the
whole, considering the state of feelings that had been
awakened, it may be allowed that so far stern justice
had not outstepped her province.

It was very different with what was to follow.
An enormous scheme of eviction had been planned
by Cromwell which was to include all the native and
nearly all the Anglo- Irish inhabitants of Ireland,
with the exception of the humblest tillers of the soil,
who were reserved as serfs, or servants. This was a
scheme of nothing less than the transportation of all
the existing Catholic landowners of Ireland, who, at
a certain date, were ordered to quit their homes, and
depart in a body into Connaught, there to inhabit a
narrow desolate tract, between the Shannon and the

268 CROMWELL'S METHODS.

sea, destitute, for the most part, of houses or any ac-
commodation for their reception ; where they were
to be debarred from entering any walled town, and
where a cordon of soldiers was to be stationed to
prevent their return. May i, 1654, was the date fixed
for this national exodus, and all who after that date
were found east of the appointed line were to suffer
the penalty of death.

The dismay awakened when the magnitude of this
scheme burst upon the unhappy country may easily
be conceived. Delicate ladies, high-born men and
women, little children, the old, the sick, the suffering
— all were included in this common disaster ; all
were to share alike in this vast and universal sentence
of banishment. Resistance, too, was hopeless. Every-
thing that could be done in the way of resistance had
already been done, and the result was visible. The
Irish Parliament had ceased to exist. A certain
number of its Protestant members had been trans-
ferred by Cromwell to the English one, — thus antici-
pating the Union that was to come a century and
a half later. The whole government of the country
was at present centred in a board of commissioners,
who sat in Dublin, and whose direct interest it was to
hasten the exodus as much as possible.

For the new owners, who were to supplant those
about to be ejected, were ready and waiting to step
into their places. The Cromwellian soldiers who
had served in the war had all received promises of
grants of land, and their pay, now several years
due, was also to be paid to them in the same coin.
The intention was, that they were to be marched

MILITARY COLONIES. 269

down regiment by regiment, and company by com-
pany, to ground already chosen for them by lot, then
and there disbanded, and put into possession. A vast
Protestant military colony was thus to be established
over the whole of the eastern provinces. In addition
to these an immense number of English speculators
had advanced money upon Irish lands, and were now
eagerly waiting to receive their equivalent.

As the day drew nearer, there arose all over
Ireland a wild plea for time, for a little breathing
time before being driven into exile. The first sum-
mons had gone out in the autumn, and had been
proclaimed by beat of drum and blast of trumpet all
over the country, and as the 1st of May began to
approach the plea grew more and more urgent. So
evident was the need for delay that some, even
among the Parliamentarians, were moved to pity,
and urged that a little more time might be granted.
The command to " root out the heathen " was felt
to be imperative, but even the heathen might be
allowed a little time to collect his goods, and to pro-
vide some sort of a roof to shelter him in this new
and forlorn home to which he was being sent.

It happened, too, that some of the first batches
of exiles were ordered into North Clare, to a district
known as the Burren, whose peculiarity is that what
little soil is to be found there has collected into rifts
below the surface/ or accumulated into pockets of
earth at the feet of the hills, leaving the rest of the
surface sheer rock, the very streams, whose edges
would otherwise be green, being mostly carried under-
ground. The general appearance of the region has

270 CROM WELL'S METHODS.

been vividly described by one of the commissioners
engaged in carrying out this very act of transplan-
tation, who, writing back to Dublin for further in-
structions, informs his superiors that the region in
question did not possess " water enough to drown a
man, trees enough to hang a man, or earth enough to
bury a man." It may be conceived what an effect
such a region, so described, must have had upon men
fresh from the fertile and flourishing pasture-lands of
Meath and Kildare. Many turned resolutely back,
preferring rather to die than to attempt life under
such new and hopeless conditions, and stern examples
had to be made before the unwilling emigrants were
at last fairly got underweigh.

Yet even such exile as this was better than the lot
of some. The wives and families of the Irish officers
and soldiers who had been allowed to go into foreign
service, had, of necessity, been left behind, and a con-
siderable number of these, the Government now pro-
ceeded to ship in batches to the West Indies to be sold
as slaves. Several thousand women, ladies and others,
were thus seized and sold by dealers, often without
any individual warrant, and it was not until after the
accidental seizure of some of the wives of the Crom-
wellian soldiers that the traffic was put under regu-
lations. Cromwell's greatness needs no defence, but
the slaughter of the garrisons of Drogheda and
Wexford, reckoned amongst the worst blemishes upon
that greatness, pales beside such an act as this ; one
which would show murkily even upon the blackened
record of an Alva or a Pizarro.

Slowly the long trains of exiles began now to

FAILURE OF THE EVICTION SCHEME. 271

pour out in all directions. Herds of cattle, horses
laden with furniture, with food, with all the every-
day necessities of such a multitude accompanied
them. All across that wide limestone plain, which
covers the centre of Ireland, innumerable family
groups were to be seen slowly streaming west There
were few roads, and those few very bad. Hardly
a wheeled conveyance of any sort existed in the
country. Those who were too weak to walk or to ride
had to be carried on men's backs or in horse litters.
The confusion, the misery, the cold, the wretched-
ness may be conceived, and always behind, urging
them on, rebuking the loiterers, came the armed escort
sent to drive them into exile — Puritan seraphs, with
drawn swords, set to see that none returned whence
they came !

Nor was there even any marked satisfaction amongst
those who inherited the lands and houses thus left
vacant. Many of the private soldiers who had re-
ceived bonds or debentures for their share of the
land, had parted with them long since, either to their
own officers or to the trafficers in such bonds, who
had sprang up by hundreds, and who obtained them
from the needy soldiers often for a mere trifle. Sharp-
sighted speculators like Dr. Petty, by whom the
well-known Survey of Ireland was made, acquired
immense tracts of land at little or no outlay. Of
those soldiers, too, who did receive grants of land
many left after a while. Others, despite all regu-
lations to the contrary, married Irish wives, and their
children in the next generation were found to have
not only become Roman Catholics, but to be actually

272

CROMWELL'S METHODS.

unable to speak a word of English. Many, too, of the
dispossessed proprietors, the younger ones especially,
continued to hang about, and either harassed the new
owners and stole their goods, or made friends with
them, and managed after a while to slip back upon
some excuse into their old homes. No sternness of the
Puritan leaven availed to hinder the new settlers from
being absorbed into the country, as other and earlier
settlers had been absorbed before them ; marrying
its daughters, adopting its ways, and becoming them-
selves in time Irishmen. The bitter memory of that
vast and wholesale act of eviction has remained, but
the good which it was hoped would spring from it
faded away almost within a generation.

XLI.

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

CROMWELL was now dead, and after a very short
attempt at government his son Richard had relin-
quished the reins and retired into private life. Henry
Cromwell, who had for several years been Lord-
Lieutenant in Ireland, and had won no little liking by
his mild and equable rule, also honourably resigned at
the same time, and left. Coote, on the other hand,
and Broghill, both of whom had acquired immense
estates under the Cromwellian rule, were amongst
the foremost to hail the Restoration, and to secure
their own interests by being eager to welcome the
king. Such secular vicars of Bray were not likely to
suffer whatever king or government came uppermost.

To the exiled proprietors, who had fought for that
king's father and for himself, it naturally seemed that
the time had come for their sufferings and exile to
end. Now that the king had been restored to his
own again, they who had been punished for his sake
should also, they thought, in fairness, again enjoy
what had been theirs before the war.

Charles's position, it must be acknowledged, was a
very difficult one. Late found as it was, the loyalty

HENRY CROMWELL, LORD-LIEUTENANT FROM 1657 TO l66o.
(From a Mezzotint.)

THE COURT OF CLAIMS. 275

of Coote, Broghill, and others of their stamp had
been eminently convenient, as without it the army in
Ireland would hardly have returned to its allegiance.
To deprive them of what they had acquired was felt
to be out of the question, and the same argument
applied, with no little force, to many of the other
newly-made proprietors. The feeling, too, against the
Irish Catholics was far from having died out in Eng-
land, and anything like a wholesale ejection of the
new Protestant settlers for their benefit, would have
been very badly received there.

On the other hand, decency and the commonest
sense of honour required that something should be
done. Ormond, who had been made a duke, was at
once reinstated in his own lands, with a handsome
additional slice as a recompense for his services. A
certain number of other great proprietors and lords of
the Pale, a list of whom was rather capriciously made
out, were also immediately reinstated. For the rest,
more tardy and less satisfactory justice was to be
meted.

A Court of Claims was set up in Dublin to try the
cases of those who claimed, during the late war, to
have been upon the king's side. Those who could
prove their entire innocence of the original rebellion
were to be at once reinstated ; those, on the other
hand, who were in arms before '49, or who had been
at any time joined to the party of Rinucini, or had
held any correspondence, even accidentally, with that
party, were to be excluded, and if they had received
lands in Connaught might stay there and be thankful.

A wearisome period of endless dispute, chicanery,

276 THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.

and wrangling followed this decision. As the soldiers
and adventurers were only to be dispossessed in case
of a sufficiency of reserved lands being found to
compensate them, it followed that the fewer of the
original proprietors that could prove their loyalty
the better for the Government. At the first sitting
of the Court of Claims the vast majority of those
whose cases were tried were able thus to prove their
innocence ; and as all these had a claim to be rein-
stated, great alarm was felt, and a clamour of indig-
nation arose from the new proprietors, at which the
Government, taking alarm, made short work of many
of the remaining claims, whereupon a fresh, and cer-
tainly not less reasonable, clamour was raised upon
the other side.

The end of the long-drawn struggle may be stated
in a few words. The soldiers, adventures, and de-
benture holders agreed at length to accept two-thirds
of their land, and to give up the other third, and on
this arrangement, by slow degrees, the country settled
down. As a net result of the whole settlement we
find that, whereas before '41 the Irish Roman
Catholics had held two-thirds of the good land and
all the waste, after the Restoration they held only
one-third in ail, and this, too, after more than two
millions of acres previously forfeited had been re-
stored to them.

XLII.

OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.

No class of the community suffered more severely
from the effects of the Restoration than the Presby-
terians of Ulster. The church party which had re-
turned to Ireland upon the crest of the new wave
signalized its return by a violent outburst of intolerance
directed not so much against the Papists as the Non-
conformists. Of the 300,000 Protestants, which was
roughly speaking the number calculated to be at that
time in Ireland, fully a third were Presbyterians,
another 100,000 being made up of Puritans and other
Nonconformists, leaving only one-third Churchmen.
Against the two former, but especially against the
Presbyterians, the terrors of the law were now put in
force. A new Act of Uniformity was passed, and
armed with this, the bishops with Bramhall, the
Primate, at their head, insisted upon an acceptance
of the Prayer-book being enforced upon all who were
permitted to hold any benefice, or to teach or preach
in any church or public place.

The result was that the Presbyterians were driven
away in crowds from Ireland. Out of seventy
ministers in Ulster, only eight accepted the terms

278 OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.

and were ordained ; all the remainder were expelled,
and their flocks in many cases elected to follow them
into exile.

This persecution was the more monstrous that no
hint or pretext of disloyalty was urged against them.
They had been planted in the country as a defence
and breakwater against the Roman Catholics, and
now the same intolerance which had, in a great
measure forced the latter to rebel, was in its turn
being brought to bear upon them.

The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, now
found themselves indulged to a degree that they had
not experienced for nearly a century. The penal laws
at the special instance of the king were suspended in
their favour. Many of the priests returned, and were
allowed to establish themselves in their old churches.
They could not do so, however, without violent alarm
being awakened upon the other side. The Irish
Protestants remonstrated angrily, and their indigna-
tion found a vehement echo in England. The '41
massacre was still as fresh in every Protestant's mind
as if it had happened only the year before, and sus-
picion of Rome was a passion ready at any moment
to rise to frenzy.

The heir to the Crown was a Papist, and Charles
was himself strongly, and not unreasonably suspected
of being secretly one also. His alliance with Louis
XIV. was justifiably regarded with the utmost
suspicion and dislike by all his Protestant subjects. It
only wanted a spark to set this mass of smouldering
irritation and suspicion into a flame.

That spark was afforded by the murder of Sir

EXECUTION OF DR. PLUNKETT. 279

Edmondbury Godfrey, under circumstances which
were at first believed to point to its having been
committed by Papists. A crowd of perjured wit-
nesses, with Titus Gates at their head, sprang like
evil birds of the night into existence, ready to swear
away the lives of any number of innocent men. The
panic flew across the Channel. Irish Roman Catholics
of all classes and ages were arrested and flung into
prison. Priests who had ventured to return were
ordered to quit the country at once. Men of stainless
honour, whose only crime was their faith, were on no
provocation seized and subjected to the most ignomi-
nious treatment, and in several instances put to death.

The case of Dr. Plunkett, the Roman Catholic Arch-
bishop of Armagh, a man whom even Protestants
regarded with the utmost reverence, is the most noto-
rious of these. Upon a ridiculous charge of being im-
plicated in a wholly mythical French descent, he was
dragged over to London, summarily sentenced, con-
victed, and hung, drawn, and quartered. Although the
most eminent, he was only one, however, of the
victims of this most insane of panics. Reason seemed
to have been utterly lost. Blood and blood alone
could satisfy the popular craving, and victim after
victim was hurried, innocent but unpitied, to his
doom.

At last the tide stayed. First slackened, then
suddenly — in Ireland at least — reversed itself, and
ran almost as recklessly and as violently as ever,
only in the opposite direction. In 1685 Charles died,
and James now king, resolved with hardly an
attempt at further concealment to carry out his own

280 OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.

long-cherished plans. From the beginning of his
reign his private determination seems to have been
to make Ireland a stronghold and refuge for his
Roman Catholic subjects, in order that by their aid he
might make himself independent both of England
and the Parliament, and so carry out that despotism
upon which his whole narrow, obstinate soul was in-
flexibly set

His first step was to recall the Duke of Ormond,
whom Charles had left as Viceroy, and to appoint in
his place two Lords Justices, Lord Granard and the
Primate Boyle, who were likely, he believed, to be
more malleable. All tests were to be immediately
done away with. Catholicism was no longer to be a
disqualification for office, and Roman Catholics were
to be appointed as judges. A more important change
still, the army was to be entirely remodelled ; Pro-
testant officers were to be summarily dismissed, and
Roman Catholic ones as summarily put in their
places.

Such sweeping changes could not, even James found,
be carried out all at once. The Lords Justices were
next dismissed, and his own brother-in-law, Lord
Clarendon, sent over as Lord-Lieutenant. He in
turn proving too timid, or too constitutional, his
place was before long filled by Richard Talbot, a
fervent Catholic, but a man of indifferent public
honour and more than indifferent private character.
Talbot was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and arrived in
1686 avowedly to carry out the new policy.

From this point the stream ran fast and strong.
The recent innovations, especially the re-organization

ALARM OF THE IRISH PROTESTANTS. 281

of the army, had naturally caused immense alarm
amongst the whole Protestant colony. A petition
drawn out by the former proprietors and forwarded to
the king against the Act of Settlement had made them
tremble also for their estates, and now this new
appointment came to put a climax to their dismay.
What might not be expected they asked in terror,
under a man so unscrupulous and so bigoted, with
an army, too, composed mainly of Roman Catholics
at his back to enforce his orders ? The depar-
ture of Clarendon was thus the signal for a new
Protestant exodus. Wild reports of a general mas-
sacre, one which was to surpass the massacre of '41,
flew through the land. Terrified people flocked to
the sea-coast and embarked in any boat they could
find for England. Those that remained behind drew
themselves together for their own defence within bar-
ricaded houses, and in the towns in the north,
especially in Enniskillen and Londonderry, the
Protestant inhabitants closed their gates and made
ready to withstand a siege.

Meanwhile in Dublin sentences of outlawry were fast
being reversed, and the estates of the Protestants being
restored in all directions to their former proprietors.
The charters of the corporate towns were next revoked,
and new (by preference Catholic) aldermen and
mayors appointed by the viceroy. All Protestants
were ordered to give up their arms by a certain day,
and to those who did not, " their lives and goods," it
was announced, "should be at the mercy and discretion
of the soldiers." These soldiers, now almost exclu-
sively Catholic, lived at free quarters upon the farms

282 OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.

and estates of the Protestants. " Tories," lately
out "upon their keeping," with prices upon their
heads, were now officers in the king's service. The
property of Protestants was seized all over the
country, their houses taken possession of, their sheep
and cattle slaughtered by hundreds of thousands.
All who could manage to escape made for the north,
where the best Protestant manhood of the country
had now gathered together, and was standing reso-
lutely in an attitude of self-defence.

In England, William of Orange had meanwhile
landed in Torbay, and James had fled precipitately to
France. Tyrconnel, who seems to have been un-
prepared for this event, hesitated at first, undecided
what to do or how matters would eventually shape
themselves. He even wrote to William, professing
to be rather favourable than otherwise to his cause,
a profession which the king, who was as yet anything
but firm in his own seat, seems to have listened to with
some belief, and General Richard Hamilton was sent
over by him to negotiate matters with the viceroy.

The passions awakened on both sides were far
too strong however, for any such temporizing.
Louis XIV. had received James upon his flight
with high honour, and his return to the throne
was believed by his own adherents to be immi-
nent. In England, especially in London, the ex-
citement against the Irish Catholics was prodigious,
and had been increased by the crowd of Protestant
refugees who had recently poured .in. The Irish
regiments brought to England by James had been
insultingly disbanded, and their officers put under

LANDING OF JAMES II. AT KINSALE. 283

arrest. " Lilibullero," the anti-Catholic street song,
was sung by thousands of excited lips. Lord Jefferies,
who embodied in his own person all that the popular
hatred most detested in his master's rule, had been
dragged to prison amid the threatening howls of the
populace. The " Irish night," during which — though
without the faintest shadow of reason — the London
citizens had fully believed an Irish mob to be in
the act of marching upon the town, with the set pur-
pose of massacring every Protestant man, woman, and
child in it, had worked both town and nation to the
highest possible pitch of excitement. In Ireland too
the stream had gone too far and too fast to turn
back. The minority and the majority stood facing
one another like a pair of pugilists. The Pro-
testants, whose property had been either seized or
wasted, were fast concentrating themselves behind
Lough Foyle. Thither Tyrconnel sent Richard
Hamilton — who, deserting William, had thrown him-
self upon the other side — with orders to reduce
Londonderry before aid could arrive from Eng-
land. To James himself Tyrconnel wrote, urging
him to start for Ireland without delay. Though
unprepared at present to furnish soldiers, Louis was
munificent in other respects. A fleet of fourteen men-
of-war, with nine smaller vessels, was provided. Arms,
ammunition, and money without stint were placed
at the command of the exile, and a hundred French
officers with the Count d'Avaux, one of the king's
most trusted officials, as envoy, were sent to accom-
pany the expedition. On March 12, 1689, James II.
landed at Kinsale.

XLIII.

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

JAMES'S appearance in Ireland was hailed with a
little deserved burst of enthusiasm. As a king, as
a Catholic, and as a man in deep misfortune, he
had a triple claim upon the kindly feeling of a race
never slow to respond to such appeals. All along
the road from Cork to Dublin the people ran out
out in crowds to greet him with tears, blessings, and
cries of welcome. Women thronged the banks along
the roadsides, and held up their children to see him
go by. Flowers — as to the poor quality of which
it was hardly worth Lord Macaulay's while, by
the way, to speak so disparagingly — were offered for
his acceptance, or strewn under his feet. „ Every mark
of devotion which a desperately poor country could
show was shown without stint Accompanied by
the French ambassador, amid a group of English
exiles, and advancing under a waving roof of flags
and festoons, hastily improvised in his honour, the
least worthy of the Stuarts arrived in Dublin, and
took up his residence at the castle.

His sojourn there was certainly no royal bed of
roses! The dissensions between his English and his

CONFLICTING INTERESTS. 285

Irish followers were not only deep, but ineffaceable. By
each the situation was regarded solely from the stand-
point of his own country. Was James to remain in
Ireland and to be an Irish king ? or was he merely to
use Ireland as a stepping-stone to England ? Between
two such utterly diverse views no point of union was
discoverable.

In the interests of his own master, D'Avaux, the
French envoy, strongly supported Tyrconnel and the
Irish leaders. The game of France was less to re-
place James on the English throne than to make of
Ireland a permanent thorn in the side of England.
With this view he urged James to remain in Dublin,
where he would necessarily be more under the direct
control of the parliament. James, however declined
this advice, and persisted in going north, where he
would be within a few hours' sail of Great Britain.
Once Londonderry had fallen (and it was agreed
upon all hands that Londonderry could not hold out
much longer), he could at any moment cross to Scot-
land, where it was believed that his friends would at
once rally around him.

But Londonderry showed no symptoms of yielding.
In April, 1689, James appeared before its walls, be-
lieving that he had only to do so to receive its sub-
mission. He soon found his mistake. Lundy, its
governor, was ready indeed to surrender it into his
hands, but the townsfolk declined the bargain, and shut
their gates resolutely in the king's face. Lundy es-
caped for his life over the walls, and James, in disgust,
returned to Dublin, leaving the conduct of the siege
in the hands of Richard Hamilton, who was afterwards

286 WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

superseded in the command by De Rosen, a Muscovite
in the pay of France, who prosecuted it with a bar-
barity unknown to the annals of civilized warfare.

The tale of that heroic defence has been so told
that it need assuredly never, while the world lasts,
be told again. Suffice it then that despite the false-
ness of its governor, the weakness of its walls, the lack
of any military training on the part of its defenders ;
despite the treacherous dismissal of the first ships
sent to its assistance ; despite the long agony of seeing
other ships containing provisions hanging inertly at the
mouth of the bay ; despite shot and shell without, and
famine in its most grisly forms within — despite all this
the little garrison held gallantly on to the " last ounce
of horse-flesh and the last pinch of corn." At length,
upon the iO5th day of the siege, three ships, under
Kirke's command, broke through the boom in the
channel, and brought their freights in safety to
the starved and ghastly defenders, gathered like
ghosts, rather than human beings, upon the quay,
Three days later De Rosen broke up his camp, and
moved off in disgust, leaving behind him the little
city, exhausted but triumphant, having saved the
honour of its walls, and won itself imperishable fame.

While all this was going on in the north, James, in
Dublin, had been busily employed in deluging the
country with base money to supply his own necessi-
ties, with the natural result of ruining all who were
forced to accept it. At the same time the Parliament
under his nominal superintendence had settled down
to the congenial task of reversing most of the earlier
Acts, and putting everything upon an entirely new

THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT SET ASIDE. 287

footing. It was a Parliament composed, as was
natural, almost wholly of Roman Catholics, only six
Protestants having been returned. Its first task was
to repeal Poynings Act, the Act, which, it will be
remembered, was passed in Henry VII. 's reign, binding
it independence upon the English Parliament. Its next
to establish freedom of worship, giving the Roman
Catholic tithes to the priests. So far no objections
could reasonably be raised. Next, however, followed
the question of forfeitures. The hated Act of Settle-
ment, upon which all property in Ireland was now
based, was set aside, and it was setted that all lands
should revert to their former proprietors. Then fol-
lowed the punishment of the political adversaries.
" The hugest Bill of attainder," says Mr. Green, " the
world has seen," was hastily drawn up and passed.
By its provisions over 2,240 persons were attained,
and everything that they possessed vested in the
king. Many so attained were either women or young
children, indeed a large proportion of the names seem
to have been inserted at haphazard or from some
merely momentary feeling of anger or vindictiveness.
These Acts were perhaps only what is called
natural, but it must be owned that they were also ter-
ribly unfortunate. Up to that date those directly penal
laws against Catholics which afterwards disfigured the
statute book were practically unknown. A Catholic
could sit in either Irish House of Parliament ; he
could inherit lands, and bequeath them to whom he
would ; he could educate his children how and where
he liked. The terror planted in the breast of the
Protestant colony by that inoperative piece of legis

288 WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

lation found its voice in the equally violent, but
unfortunately not equally inoperative, passed Acts
by them in the hour of their triumph. Acts, by
means of which it was fondly hoped that their enemies
would be thrown into such a position of dependence
and humiliation that they could never again rise up
to be a peril.

In the north a brilliant little victory had meanwhile
been won by the Enniskillen troops under Colonel
Wolseley, at Newtown Butler, where they attacked a
much larger force of the enemy and defeated them,
killing a large number and driving the rest back in
confusion. William was still detained in England,
but had despatched the Duke of Schomberg with
a considerable force. Schomberg's men, were mostly
raw recruits, and the climate tried them severely.
He arrived in the autumn, but not venturing to take
the field, established himself at Dundalk, where his
men misbehaved and all but mutinied, and where, a
pestilence shortly afterwards breaking out, swept them
away in multitudes.

On both sides, indeed, the disorganization of the
armies was great. Fresh reinforcements had arrived
for James, under the Comte de Lauzan, in return for
which an equal number of Irish soldiers under Colonel
Macarthy had been drafted for service to France. In
June, 1690, William himself landed at Carrickfergus
with an army of 35,000 men, composed of nearly
every nationality in Europe — Swedes, Dutch, Swiss,
Batavians, French Huguenots, Finns, with about
15,000 English soldiers. He came up to James's army
upon the banks of the Boyne, about twenty miles

BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. 289

from Dublin, and here it was that the turning battle
of the campaign was fought.

This battle James watched at a discreet distance
from the hill of Donore. The Irish foot, upon
whom the brunt of the action fell, were untrained,
indifferently armed, and had never before been in
action ; their opponents were veterans trained in
European wars. They were driven back, fled, and
a considerable number of them slaughtered. The
Irish cavalry stood firm, but their valour was power-
less to turn the day. Schomberg was killed, but
William remained absolute and undisputed master of
the field.

At the first shock of reverse James flew down the
hill and betook himself to Dublin. He arrived there
foaming and almost convulsed with rage. " Madam,
your countrymen have run away ! " was his gracious
address to Lady Tyrconnel. " If they have, sire, your
Majesty seems to have won the race," was that lady's
ready retort.

The king's flight was without reason or measure.
As before in England, so now, he seemed to pass in
a moment from insane self-confidence to an equally
insane panic. He fled south, ordering the bridges to
be broken down behind him ; took boat at Waterford,
and never rested until he found himself once more
safe upon French soil.

His flight at least left the field clear for better
men. Patrick Sarsfield now took the principal
command, and prosecuted the campaign with a
vigour of which it had hitherto shown no symptoms.
Sarsfield is the one redeeming figure upon the

2QO WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

Jacobite side. His gallant presence sheds a ray of
chivalric light upon this otherwise gloomiest and least
attractive of campaigns. He could not turn defeat to
victory, but he could, and did succeed in snatching
honour out of that pit into which the other leaders, and
especially his master, had let it drop. Brave, honour-
able, upright, " a gentleman of eminent merit," is
praise which even those least inclined to favour his
side of the quarrel bestow upon him without stint.

William, now established in Dublin, issued a procla-
mation offering full and free pardon to all who would
lay down their arms. He was genuinely anxious to avoid
pushing the struggle to the bitter end, and to hinder
further bloodshed. Though deserted by their king,
and fresh from overwhelming defeat, the Irish troops
showed no disposition, however, of yielding. Athlone,
Galway, Cork, Kinsale, and Limerick still held out,
and behind the walls of the last named the remains
of James's broken army was now chiefly collected.
Those walls, however, were miserably weak, and the
French generals utterly scouted the possibility of
their being held. Tyrconnel, too, advised a capitu-
lation, but Sarsfield insisted upon holding the town,
and the Irish soldiers — burning to wipe out the shame
of the Boyne — supported him like one man. William
was known, to be moving south to the attack, and
accordingly Lauzan and Tyrconnel, with the rest of
the French troops moved hastily away to Galway,
leaving Sarsfield to defend Limerick as he could.

They had hardly left before William's army ap-
peared in sight with the king himself at their head,
and drew up before the walls. A formidable siege

SIEGE OF LIMERICK. 29 1

train, sent after him from Dublin, was to follow in a
day or two. Had it arrived it would have finished
the siege at once. Sarsfield accordingly slipped out
of the town under cover of night, fell upon it while
it was on its way through the Silvermine Hills
in Tipperary, killed some sixty of the men who were
in charge, and filling the cannons with powder, burst
them with an explosion which startled the country
round for miles, and the roar of which is said to have
reached William in his camp before Limerick.

This brilliant little feat delayed the siege. Never-
theless it was pressed on with great vigour. Two
more guns were obtained, several of the outworks
carried, and a breach began to show in the ram-
parts. It was now autumn, the rainy season was
setting in, and William's presence was urgently wanted
in England. After another violent attempt, therefore,
to take the town, which was resisted with the most
desperate valour, the very women joining in the fight,
and remaining under the hottest fire, the besiegers
drew off, and William shortly afterwards sailed for
England, leaving the command in the hands of Ginkel,
the ablest of his Dutch generals.

This first siege of Limerick is in many respects
a very remarkable one, and bears a close analogy
to the yet more famous siege of Londonderry. To
give the parallel in Lord Macaulay's words — "The
southern city," he says " was, like the northern city,
the last asylum of a Church and of a nation. Both
places were crowded by fugitives from all parts of
Ireland. Both places appeared to men who had made
a regular study of the art of war incapable of resisting

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

an enemy. ... In both cases, religious and patriotic
enthusiasm struggled unassisted against great odds ;
in both cases, religious and patriotic enthusiasm did
what veteran warriors had pronounced it absurd to
attempt."

In Galway, meanwhile, violent quarrels had broken
out. The French troops were sick, naturally enough,
of the campaign, and not long afterwards sailed
for France. Their places were taken later on by
another body of French soldiers under General St.
Ruth. St. Ruth was a man of cold, disdainful tem-
perament, but a good officer. He at once set to
work at the task of restoring order and getting the
army into a condition to take the field. Early in the
spring Ginkel had collected his army in Mullingar
ready to march to the assault of Athlone, the ancient
Norman fortress, upon the bank of the Shannon, which
was here spanned by a single bridge. Upon Ginkel's
advance this bridge was broken down, and the besieged
and besiegers were separated therefore by the breadth
of the river. After an unsuccessful attempt to repair
the breach the Dutch general resolved to ford the
latter. As it happened the water was unusually low,
and although St. Ruth with a large force was at the
time only a mile away, he, unaccountably, made no
attempt to defend the ford. A party of Ginkel's
men waded or swam across in the dark, caught the
broken end of the bridge, and held it till it was
repaired. This done, the whole English army poured
across the river.

The struggle was now narrowing fast. Leaving
Athlone Ginkel advanced to Ballinasloe, so well-

BATTLE OF AUGHRIM. 293

known now from its annual sheep fairs. The country
here is all but a dead flat, but the French general
took advantage of some rising ground on the slope
of which stood the ruined castle of Aughrim. Here
the Irish were posted by him in force, one of those
deep brown bogs which cover so much of the surface
of Galway lying at their feet and surrounding them
upon two sides.

The battle which broke at five o'clock the next
morning was a desperate one. Roused at last
from his coldness St. Ruth appealed in the most
moving terms to the. officers and men to fight for
their religion, their liberties, their honour! His appeal
was gallantly responded to. A low stone breast-work
had been raised upon the hillside in front of the Irish,
and against this Ginkel's veterans again and again
advanced to the attack, and again and again were
beaten back, broken and, in one instance, chased
down the hill on to the plain. St. Ruth broke into
vehement enthusiasm. " The day," he cried, waving
his hat in the air, " is ours, gentlemen ! " A party of
Huguenot cavalry, however, were presently seen to be
advancing across the bog so as to turn the flank of the
Irish army. It seemed to be impossible that they
could get through, but the ground was firmer than at
first appeared, and some hurdles thrown down in front
of them formed a sort of rude causeway. St. Ruth
flew to the point of danger. On his way he was struck
by a cannon ball which carried off his head, and the
army was thus left without a general. Sarsfield was
at some distance with the reserve. There was no one
to give any orders. The breast-work was carried.

294

WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.

The Irish fought doggedly, retreating slowly from
enclosure to enclosure. At last, left to themselves
with no one to direct or support them, they broke
and fled down the hill. Then followed a hideous
butchery. Few or no prisoners were taken, and
the number of the slain is stated to have been " in
proportion to the number engaged greater than in
any other battle of that age." An eye-witness who
looked from the hill the next day said that the
country for miles around was whitened with the
naked bodies of the slain. It looked, he remarked
with grim vividness, like an immense pasture covered
with flocks of sheep !

INITIAL LETTER FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS.

XLIV.

THE TREATY OF LIMERICK.

NOTHING was now left but Limerick. Galway
had yielded immediately after the day of Aughrim,
its garrison claiming and obtaining the right of march-
ing out with all the honours of war. Tyrconnel was
dying, and had long lost, too, what little reputa-
tion he had ever had as a soldier. Sarsfield, how-
ever, stood firm to the last. Fresh reinforcements
were hoped for from France, but none came until too
late to be of any use. The town was again invested
and besieged. An English fleet held the mouth
of the Shannon so as to prevent any relief from
coming to its aid. From the middle of August to
the end of September the siege went on, and the
walls, always weak, were riddled with shot and shell.
Still it showed no symptoms of submission. Ginkel,
who was in command of William's army, dreaded
the approach of autumn, and had instructions from
his master to finish the campaign as rapidly as
possible, and with this end in view to offer good and
honourable terms to the Irish. An armistice accord-
ingly was agreed to for three days, and before the
three days ended the famous " Articles of Limerick "

296 THE TREATY OF LIMERICK.

were drawn up and signed by Sarsfield on the one
hand, and the Lords Justices, who had just arrived
in camp from Dublin, on the other.

The exact purport of these articles, and the extent
to which they were afterwards mutilated and perverted
from their original meaning has been hotly disputed,
and is too large and complicated a question to enter
into here at any length. Suffice it to say, that they
engaged that the Roman Catholics of Ireland should
enjoy the same privileges as they had previously enjoyed
in the reign of Charles II, ; that they should be free to
follow the same trades and professions as before the war,
and that all who were in arms, having a direct com-
mission from King James, "with all such as were
under their protection" should have a free pardon and
be left in undisputed ownership of their lands and
other possessions.

It is over the clause placed in italics that con-
troversy has waxed fiercest. That it was in the first
draft is admitted ; that it was not in the document
itself is equally certain. Had it been intentionally or
accidentally excluded ? is the question. William's
own words were that it had been " casually omitted
by the writer." The evidence seems clear, yet his-
torians, who on other matters would hardly question
his accuracy, seem to think that in this instance he
was mistaken. That his own mind was clear on the
point there can be little doubt, seeing that he made the
most honourable efforts to get the clause in question
carried into effect. In this he failed. Public opinion
in England ran furiously against the Irish Catholics,
and the Parliament absolutely refused to ratify it.

THE MILITARY TREATY. 2Q7

The essential clause was accordingly struck out, and
the whole treaty soon became an absolute dead letter.

On the other hand, the military one, which was drawn
up at the same time and signed by the two generals,
was carried honourably into effect. By its terms
it was agreed that such Irish officers and soldiers as
desired to go to France should be conveyed there, and
in the meantime should remain under the command of
their own officers. Ginkel made strenuous efforts to
enlist the Irish troops in his master's service. Few,
hpwever, agreed to accept his offer. A day was fixed
for the election to be made, and the Irish troops were
passed in review. All who would take service with
William were directed to file off at a particular spot ;
all who passed it were held to have thrown in their
lot with France. The long procession was watched
with keen interest by the group of generals looking
on, but the decision was not long delayed. The vast
majority unhesitatingly elected exile, only about a
thousand agreeing to take service with William.

The most piteous part of the story remains. Sars-
field, with the soldiers under him who had elected to
go to France, withdrew into Limerick, and the next
day proceeded to Cork, where they were to embark.
The news had, in the meanwhile, spread, and the
jroads were covered with women rushing to see the last
of husbands, brothers, sons. Wives, mothers, and
children followed the departing exiles to the water's
edge, imploring with cries of agony not to be left
behind. In the extremity of his pity Sarsfield pro-
claimed that his soldiers might take their wives and
families with them to France. It was found utterly

2gS THE TREATY OP LIMERICK.

impossible, however, to do so, since no transport
could be provided for such a multitude. Room was
found for a few families, but the beach was still
crowded with those who had perforce to be left
behind. As the boats pushed off the women clung
desperately to them, and several, refusing to let go,
were dragged out of their depth and drowned. A
wild cry went up as the ships began to move. The
crowd rushed frantically along the shore from head-
land to headtand, following them with their eyes as
long as they remained in sight. When the last ship
had dropped below the horizon, and the dull autumn
dusk had settled down over sea and shore, they dis-
persed slowly to their desolate homes. Night and
desolation must indeed have seemed to have settled
down for good upon Ireland,

XLV.

THE PENAL CODE,

WE are now upon the brink of a century as full of
strange fortunes for Ireland as any that had preceded
it, but in which those fortunes were destined to take
a widely different turn. In the two preceding ones
revolts and risings had, as we have seen, been the
rule rather than the exception. In this one from the
beginning down to within a couple of years of its
close when a rebellion — which, in most impartial
historians' opinion, might with a little care have been
averted — broke the peace of the century, hardly a
symptom of any disposition to appeal to arms is
discoverable. Two great Jacobite risings convulsed
England ; the American revolt, so fraught with
momentous consequences, was fought and carried,
but Ireland never stirred. The fighting element was
gone. It was in France, in Spain, in the Low Countries
— scattered over half the battlefields of Europe. The
country which gave birth to these fighters was quiet ;
a graveyard quiet, it may be said, but still significant,
if only by contrast with what had gone before.

One advantage which the student of this century
has over others is that it has been made the subject
of a work which enables us to thread our way through

30O THE PENAL CODE.

its mazes with what, in comparison to other periods
may be called ease. In his " History of the Eigh-
teenth Century" Mr. Lecky has done for the Ireland
of one century what it is much to be desired some
one would hasten to do for the Ireland of all. He
has broken down a -barrier of prejudice so solid
and of such long standing that it seemed to be in-
vulnerable, and has proved that it is actually possible
to be just in two directions at once — a feat no
previous historian of Ireland can be said to have even
attempted. This work, the final volume of which
has not yet appeared, so completely covers the whole
ground that it seems to afford an excuse for an even
more hasty scamper over the same area than the
exigencies of space have elsewhere made inevitable.

The task to which both the English and the Irish
Parliaments now energetically addressed themselves
was— firstly, the undoing of the Acts passed in the late
reign ; secondly, the forfeiture of the estates of those
who had taken the losing side in the late campaign ;
thirdly, the passing of a series of Acts the aim of
which was as far as possible to stamp out the Roman
Catholic religion altogether, and in any case to
deprive it of any shadow or semblance of future
political importance.

To describe at length the various Acts which make
up what is known as the Penal code — "a code impos-
sible," as Mr. Lecky observed in an earlier work, " for
any Irish Protestant whose mind is not wholly per-
verted by religious bigotry, to look back at without
shame and indignation," would take too long. It
will be enough, therefore, if I describe its general

STATE " BOYCOTTING." 30! .

purport, and how it affected the political and social
life of that century upon which we are now entering.
In several respects it not a little resembled what is
nowadays known as " boycotting," only it was boy-
cotting inflicted by the State itself. As compared
with some of the enactments passed against Protes-
tants in Catholic countries, it was not, it must be said,
sanguinary, but its aim seemed to be to make life itself
intolerable ; to reduce the whole Catholic population
to the condition of pariahs and outcasts. No Papist
might possess a horse of the value of over ^5 ; no
Papist might carry arms ; no Papist might dispose
as he chose of his own property ; no Papist might
acquire any landed freehold ; no Papist might prac-
tise in any of the liberal professions ; no Papist might
educate his sons at home, neither might he send them
to be educated abroad. Deeper wrong, more biting
and terrible injury even than these, it sowed bitter
strife between father and son, and brother and brother.
Any member of a family, by simply turning Protestant,
could dispossess the rest of that family of the bulk of
the estate to his own advantage. Socially, too, a Papist,
no matter what his rank, stood below, and at the
mercy of, his Protestant neighbours. He was treated
by the executive as a being devoid, not merely of all
political, but of all social rights, and only the numerical
superiority of the members of the persecuted creed
can have enabled them to carry on existence under
such circumstances at all.

For it must be remembered (and this is one of its
worst features) that those placed under this monstrous
ban constituted the vast majority of the whole country.

302 THE PENAL CODE.

In Burke's memorable words, "This system of penalty
and incapacity has for its object no small sect or
obscure party, but a very numerous body of men, a
body which comprehends at least two-thirds of the
whole nation ; it amounts to two million eight hun-
dred thousand souls — a number sufficient for the
constituents of a great people." x " The happiness
or misery of multitudes," he adds in another place,
" can never be a thing indifferent. A law against
the majority of the people is in substance a law
against the people itself ; its extent determines
its invalidity ; it even changes its character as it
enlarges its operation ; it is not particular injustice,
but general oppression, and can no longer be con-
sidered as a private hardship which might be borne,
but spreads and grows up into the unfortunate
importance of a national calamity."

As was natural under the circumstances, many
feigned conversions took place, that being the only
way to avoid been utterly cut adrift from public
life. For by a succession of enactments, not only
were the higher offices and the professions debarred
to Roman Catholics, but they were even prohibited
— to so absurd a length can panic go — from being
sheriffs, jurymen, constables, or even gamekeepers.
" Every barrister, clerk, attorney, or solicitor," to
quote again Burke, " is obliged to take a solemn
oath not to employ persons of that persuasion; no,
not as hackney clerks, at the miserable salary of
seven shillings a week." It was loudly complained of
many years later, that men used to qualify for taking
1 " Tracts on the Popery Laws."

NON-ENFORCEMENT OF PENALTIES. 303

the oaths required upon being admitted as barristers
or attorneys by attending church and receiving a
sacramental certificate on their road to Dublin. Others,
to save their property from confiscation, sacrificed
their inclinations, often what they held to be their
hopes of salvation, to the exigencies of the situation,
and nominally embraced Protestantism. Old Lady
Thomond, for instance, upon being reproached by
some stricter co-religionist for thus imperilling her
soul, asked with quick scorn whether it was not
better that one old woman should burn than that the
Thomonds should lose their own. The head of the
house would thus often present himself or herself at
the parish church, while the other members of the
family kept to the old faith, and the chaplain, under
the name of the tutor or secretary, celebrated mass
in the harness- room or the servants' hall.

To the credit of Irish Protestants it may be said
that, once the first violence of fanaticism had died
out, there was little attempt to enforce the legal
enactments in all their hideous atrocity. According to
the strict letter of the law, no Roman Catholic bishop,
archbishop, or other dignitary ; no monk, nun, or
member of any religious fraternity, could set foot in
Ireland ; and any one who harboured them was liable
at the third offence to confiscation of all his goods. A
list of parish priests was also drawn up and certified,
and their names entered, and when these had died no
others were by law allowed to come, any so doing
being liable to the penalties of high treason. As a
matter of fact, however, they came with very little
hindrance, and the succession was steadily kept up

304 THE PENAL CODE.

from the Continent. The attempt to stamp out a
religion by force proved to be the most absolute of
failures, although, as no rule is without its exception,
it must be added that in England, where exactly
the same penal laws were in force, and where the
number of Roman Catholics was at the beginning of
the century considerable, they dwindled by the end of
it almost to the point of extinction. In Ireland
the reverse was the case. The number of Roman
Catholics, according to the most trustworthy statistics,
increased rather than diminished under the Penal
code, and there were many more conversions from
Protestantism to Catholicism than there were the
other way.

This, no doubt, was Tn great measure due to the
neglect with which the scattered Protestant com-
munities were treated, especially in the south and
west The number of Protestant clergymen was
extremely small, as many as six, seven, and even ten
livings being frequently held by a single individual,
and of these many were absentees, and their place
filled by a curate. Thus — isolated in a vast Roman
Catholic community, often with no church of their own
within reach — the few Protestants drifted by a natural
law to the faith of their neighbours. On the emphatic
and angry testimony of Archbishop Boulter, we know
that conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism
were in his time extremely common amongst the
lower orders. By law, too, no marriage between a
Protestant and Catholic was recognizable, yet there
were many such, and the children in most cases seem
to have reverted to the elder faith.

"TIGER" ROCHE, A FAMOUS IRISH DUELIST, BORN IN DUBLIN 1729.

THE PENAL CODE.

The best side of all this for the Catholics showed
itself in that feeling of devotion and fealty to their
own faith which persecution rarely fails to awaken,
and for which the Roman Catholics of Ireland, high
and low alike, have always been honourably distin-
guished. The worst was that this sense of being
under an immoveable ban sapped at all the roots of
manliness and honourable ambition. Amongst the
well-to-do classes the more spirited of the young men
went abroad and enlisted under foreign banners.
The rest stayed at home, and fell into an idle, aimless,
often disreputable, fashion of existence. The sense
of being of no account, mere valueless items in the
social hive, is no doubt answerable for a good deal
of all this. Swift assures us that in his time the
Catholic manhood of Ireland were of no more im-
portance than its women and children ; of no more
importance, he adds in another place, than so many
trees. With a patience pathetic in so essentially
impatient a race, both priests and people seem to
have settled down after awhile into a sort of desperate
acceptance of the inevitable. So complete indeed
was their submission that towards the close of the
century we find the English executive, harassed and
set at nought by its own Protestant colonists, turning
by a curious nemesis to the members of this perse-
cuted creed, whose patience and loyalty three quarters
of a century of unexampled endurance seemed to have
gone far to prove

XLVI.

THE COMMERCIAL CODE.

ALL power, place, and authority had thus once
more swung round into the hands of the Protestant
colony — "The Protestant Ascendency," as it came
after a while to be called. They alone had seats in
Parliament, they alone, until near the end of the
century, were competent to vote. Taxes were col-
lected over the whole island, but only Protestants
had a voice in their disposal. All the parliamentary
struggles of this century, it must clearly be understood,
were struggles between Protestants and Protestants,
and the different political parties, " patriotic " and
others, were parties formed exclusively amongst the
Protestants themselves. Protestantism was not only
the privileged, but it was also the polite, creed ; the
creed of the upper classes, as distinguished from the
creed of the potato-diggers and the turf-cutters ; a
view of the matter of which distinct traces may even
yet be discovered in Ireland.

If Protestants, as compared with their Roman
Catholic brethren, were happy, the Protestant colony
was very far from being allowed its own way, or
permitted to govern itself as it thought fit. Although

308 THE COMMERCIAL CODE.

avowedly kept as her garrison, and to preserve her
own power in Ireland, England had no notion of
allowing it equal advantages with herself, or of running
the smallest risk of its ever coming to stand upon
any dangerous footing of equality. The fatal theory
that it was the advantage of the one country that the
other should be kept poor, had by this time firmly
taken root in the minds of English statesmen, and to
it, and to the unreasonable jealousy of a certain
number of English traders, the disasters now to be
recorded were mainly due.

Cromwell had placed English and Irish commerce
upon an equal footing. Early in Charles II.'s reign
an Act had however been passed to hinder the
importation of Irish cattle into England, one which
had struck a disastrous, not to say fatal, blow at Irish
agricultural interests. Then as now cattle was its
chief wealth, and such a prohibition meant nothing
short of ruin to the landowners, and through them to
all who depended upon them. So far Irish ports
were open, however, to foreign countries, and when
the cattle trade ceased to be profitable, much of the
land had been turned by its owners into sheepwalks.
There was a large and an increasing demand for Irish
"wool upon the Continent, in addition to which a
considerable number of manufacturers had of late
started factories, and an energetic manufacture of
woollen goods was going on, and rapidly becoming
the principal form of Irish industry. The English
traders, struck by this fact, were suddenly smitten
with panic. The Irish competition, they declared,
were reducing their gains, and they cried loudly, there-

SMUGGLING. 309

fore, for legislative protection. Their prayer was
granted. In 1699, the last year of the century, an
Act was passed forbidding the export of Irish woollen
goods, not to England' alone, but to all other countries.

The effect of this Act was instantaneous and
startling. The manufacturers, who had come over in
large numbers, left the country for the most part
within six months, never to return again. A whole
population was suddenly thrown out of employment.
Emigration set in, but, in spite of the multitude that
left, famine laid hold of many of those who remained.
The resources of the poorest classes are always so
low in Ireland that a much less sweeping blow than
this would at any time have sufficed to bring them
over the verge of starvation.

Another important result was that smuggling
immediately began on an enormous scale. Wool
was now a drug in the legitimate market, and woollen
goods had practically no market. A vast contraband
trade sprang swiftly up upon the ruins of the legiti-
mate one. Wool, which at home was worth only 5d. or
6d. a lb., in France fetched half-a-crown. The whole
population, from the highest to the lowest, flung
themselves energetically on the side of the smugglers.
The coast-line was long and intricate ; the excise
practically powerless. Wool was packed in caves all
along the south and south-west coast, and carried off as
opportunity served by the French vessels which came
to seek it. What was meant by nature and Provi-
dence to have been the honest and open trade of the
country was thus forced to be carried on by stealth
and converted into a crime. It alleviated to some

310 THE COMMERCIAL CODE.

degree the distress, but it made Law seem more
than ever a mockery, more than ever the one arch-
enemy against which every man's hand might legiti-
mately be raised.

Even this, if bad enough, was not the worst. The
worst was that this arbitrary Act — directed, it must
be repeated, by England, not against the Irish natives,
but against her own colonists — done, too, without
there being an opportunity for the country to be
heard in its own defence — struck at the very root of
all enterprise, and produced a widespread feeling of
hopelessness and despair. Since this was the acknow-
ledged result of too successful rivalry with England, of
what use, it was openly asked, to attempt any new
enterprise, or what was to hinder the same fate from
befalling it in its turn ? The whole relationship of
the two' islands, even where no division of blood or
creed existed, grew thus to be strained and embittered
to. the last degree; the sense of hostility and indig-
nation being hardly less strong in the latest arrived
colonist than in the longest established. " There was
scarce an Englishman," says a writer of the time,
" who had been seven years in the country, and meant
to remain there, who did not become averse to England,
and grow into something of an Irishman." All this
must be taken into account before those puzzling con-
tradictions and anomalies which make up the history
of this century can ever be properly realized.

XLVII.

MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.

THE early half of the eighteenth century is such a
very dreary period of Irish history that there is little
temptation to linger over it. Two men, however,
stand out conspicuously against this melancholy back-
ground, neither of whom must be passed over without
a few words.

The first of these was William Molyneux, the
" Ingenious Molyneux," as he was called by his con-
temporaries, a distinguished philosopher, whose life
was almost exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits.
Molyneux is, or ought to be, a very interesting figure
to any one who cares, even slightly, about Ireland.
He was one of the chief founders of the Philosophical
Association in Dublin, which was the parent both of
the present Dublin Society and of the Royal Irish
Academy. He was also a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and a friend of John Locke, with whom he
constantly corresponded. Both his letters, and those
of his brother, Dr. Thomas Molyneux, show the most
vivid and constant interest in everything connected
with the natural history of Ireland. Now it is a
moving bog, which has scared the natives in its neigh-

312 MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.

bourhood out of their senses ; now, again, some great
find of Irish elks, or some tooth of a mammoth which
has been unearthed, and it is gravely discussed how such
a " large-bodied beast " could have been transported
over seas, especially to a country where the " Greeks
and Romans never had a footing," and where therefore
the learned Mr. Camden's theory, that the elephants'
bones found in England were the remains of those
" brought over by the Emperor Claudius," necessarily
falls to the ground. Both the brothers Molyneux
belong to a band of Irish naturalists whose numbers
are, unfortunately, remarkably limited. Why it should
be so is not easily explained, but so it is. When Irish
archaeology is mentioned, the names of Petrie, of
Wilde, of Todd, of Graves, and, last but not least, of
Miss Margaret Stokes spring to the mind. Irish
geologists, with Sir Richard Griffiths at their head,
show as good a record as those of any other country,
but the number of Irish naturalists whose fame has
reached beyond a very narrow area Is small indeed.
This is the less accountable as, though scanty as
regards the number of its species, the natural history
of Ireland is full of interest, abounding in problems
not even yet fully solved : the very scantiness of its
fauna being in one sense, an incentive and stimulus
to its study, for the same reason that a language which
is on the point of dying out is often of more interest
to a philologist than one that is in full life and vigour.
This, however, is a digression, and as such must be
forgiven. Returning to the arena of politics, Moly-
neux's chief claim to remembrance rests upon a work
published by him in favour of the rights of the Irish

MOLYNEUX'S REMONSTRANCE. 313

Parliament in the last year but one of the seventeenth
century, only seven years therefore after the treaty of
Limerick.

As one of the members of the Dublin University
he had every opportunity of judging how the grasp
which the English Parliament maintained by means
of the obsolete machinery of Poynings' Act was
steadily throttling and benumbing all Irish enterprise.
In 1698 his famous remonstrance, known as "The
Case of Ireland being bound by Act of Parliament
made in England," appeared, with a dedication to
King William. It at once created an immense
sensation, was fiercely condemned as seditious and
libellous by the English Parliament, by whom, as a
mark of its utter abhorrence, it was condemned to be
burned by the common hangman.

Few things will give a clearer idea of the extra-
ordinarily exasperated state of politics at the time
than to read the remonstrance which produced so
tremendous a storm. Take, for example, the words
with which the earlier portion of it closes, and which
are worth studying, if only for the impressive dignity
of their style, which not a little foreshadows Burke's
majestic prose : —

" To conclude, I think it highly inconvenient for
England to assume this authority over the kingdom
of Ireland. I believe there will need no great argu-
ments to convince the wise assembly of English
senators how inconvenient it may be to England to
do that which may make the lords and the people of
Ireland think that they are not well used, and may

314 MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.

drive them to discontent The laws and liberties of
England were granted above five hundred years ago
to the people of Ireland, upon their submission to the
Crown of England, with a design to keep them in the
allegiance of the king of England. How consistent
it may be with true policy to do that which the people
of Ireland may think an invasion of their rights and
liberties, I do most humbly submit to the Parliament
of England to consider. They are men of great
wisdom, honour, and justice, and know how to prevent
all future inconveniences. We have heard great out-
cries, and deservedly, on breaking the edict of Nantes,
and other stipulations. How far the breaking our
constitution, which has been of five hundred years
standing exceeded these, I leave the world to judge."

In another place Molyneux vindicates the dignity
of a Parliament in words of singular force and mode-
ration : —

" The rights of Parliament should be preserved
sacred and inviolable wherever they are found. This
kind of government, once so universal all over
Europe, is now almost vanished amongst the nations
thereof. Our king's dominions are the only supporters
of this most noble Gothic constitution, save only what
little remains may be found thereof in Poland. We
should not therefore make so light of that sort of
legislature, and, as it were, abolish it in one kingdom
of the three wherein it appears, but rather cherish and
encourage it wherever we meet it." J

1 "The Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament made
in England." By William Molyneux, Esq., Dublin.

DEATH OF MOLYNEUX. 315

For a remonstrance so dignified, couched in lan-
guage so respectful, burning by the common hangman
seems a hard lot. The disgrace, if such it was, does
not appear to have very deeply penetrated its author,
who pursued the even tenour of his way, and the
same year paid a visit to his friend John Locke, on
the return journey from which visit he unfortunately
caught a chill, from the effects of which he died the
following October. After his death the momentary
stir which his eloquence had created died out, as the
circles left by the falling of a stone die out upon some
stagnant pool, until nearly a quarter of a century later
a much more violent splash again aroused attention,
and a far less pacific exponent of Irish abuses than
Molyneux sprang fiercely into the turmoil.

Jonathan Swift had been eleven years Dean of St.
Patrick's before he produced those famous letters
which have left their mark so indelibly upon the
course of Irish politics. Swift's part in this Stygian
pool of the eighteenth century is rather a diffi-
cult one to explain. He was not in any sense an
Irish champion, indeed, objected to being called an
Irishman at all, and regarded his life in Ireland as
one of all but unendurable banishment. He was a
vehement High Churchman, and looked upon the
existing penal proscription under which the Catholics
lay as not merely desirable, but indispensable. At
the same time it would be quite untrue to suppose,
as is sometimes done, that he merely made a cat's-
paw of Irish politics in order to bring himself back
into public notice. He was a man of intense and even
passionate sense of justice, and the state of affairs in

DEAN SWIFT.
(From an engraving by Foui-dinier after Jervii.)

THE DRAPIER LETTERS.

the Ireland of his day, the tyranny and political dis-
honesty which stalked in high places, the degradation
and steadily-increasing misery in which the mass of
the people were sunk, were enough to lash far less
scathing powers of sarcasm than he possessed to
their highest possible pitch of expression.

The cause that drew forth the famous Drapier
letters — why Swift chose to spell the word draper
with an i no one has ever explained — appears at first
sight hardly worthy of the occasion. Ireland wanted
a copper coinage, and Walpole, who was then the
Prime Minister, had given a patent for the purpose to
a person called Wood, part of the profits of which
patent were to go to the Duchess of Kendal, the
king's mistress. There seems no reason to think that
the pennies produced by Wood were in any way
inferior to the existing English ones, and Sir Isaac
Newton — who was at the time Master of the Mint —
declared that, if anything, they were rather better.
The real wrong, the real insult, was that the patent
was granted by the Minister without reference to the
Lord-Lieutenant, to the Irish Parliament, or to any
single human being in Ireland. It was a proof the
more of that total indifference with which the interests
of Ireland were regarded, and it was upon this score
that Swift's wrath exploded like a bomb.

The line he chose to take was to attack the patent,
not as a monstrous job — which undoubtedly it was —
but from the point of view of the value of the pennies.
Assuming the character of a tradesman, he adjured
all classes of the community, down to the very beggars,
not to be induced to accept them. Assured them that

318 MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.

for the benefit of Mr. Wood, " a mean man, a hardware
dealer," every human being in Ireland was about to be
deliberately robbed and ruined. His logic sounded
unanswerable to the ignorant. His diatribes produced
the most extraordinary effect. A terrific panic set in,
and so overwhelming was the sensation that the
Ministers in the end found it necessary to cancel the
patent, and suspend the issue of Wood's halfpence.
For the first time in Irish history public opinion, un-
supported by arms, had carried its point: an epoch
of vast importance in the history of every country.

That Swift knew perfectly well that the actual
value of the copper coinage was not a matter of pro-
found importance may be taken for granted, and so far
his conduct is certainly not justifiable on any very strict
rule of ethics. If the pennies were of small impor-
tance, however, there were other things that were of
more. Little of a patriot as he was, little as he was
supposed, or supposed himself, to care for Ireland or
Irishmen, his wrath burnt fiercely at what he saw
around him. He saw, too, his own wrongs, as others
have done before and since, "writ large" in the wrongs
of the country, and resented them as such. With his
keen, practical knowledge of men, he knew, more-
over, how thick was that medium, born of prejudice
and ignorance, through which he had to pierce — a
medium through which nothing less pointed than the
forked lightnings of his own terrible wit could have
found its way. Whatever his motives were, his suc-
cess at least is indisputable. High Churchman as he
was, vehement anti-papist as he was, he became from
that moment, and remained to the hour of his death,

WOOD S PATENT CANCELLED.

319

beyond all question the most popular man in Ireland
and his name was ever afterwards upon the lips of
all who aspired to promote the beat interests and
prosperity of their country.

XLVIII.

HENRY FLOOD.

THE forty years which follow maybe passed rapidly
over. They were years of absolute tranquillity in
Ireland, but beyond that rather negative praise little
of good can be reported of them. Public opinion was
to all practical purposes dead, and the functions of
Parliament were little more than nominal. Unlike
the English one, the Irish Parliament had by the
nature of its constitution, no natural termination, save
by a dissolution, or by the death of the sovereign.
Thus George the Second's Irish Parliament sat for
no less than thirty-three years, from the beginning
to the end of his reign. The sessions, too, had
gradually come to be, not annual as in England, but
biennial, the Lord- Lieutenant spending as a rule only
six months in every two years in Ireland. In his
absence all power was vested in the hands of the
Lords Justices, of whom the most conspicuous during
this period were the three successive archbishops of
Armagh, namely, Swift's opponent Boulter, Hoadly,
and Stone, all three Englishmen, and devoted to what
was known as the " English interest," who governed
the country by the aid of a certain number of great

PHIL.IP Earl of CffESTERTIEL-D.

Delightful taflc! to rear the tender thought.

To teach die young-idea hovr to (hoot.

To pour the frefli inftruorion o'er the mind.

To treathe th'enlivening: fpirit.and to fi* -

The generous purpofe in the glowing breau. j-f,0mfan.

LORD LIEUTENANT FROM 1745 TO 1754.

322 HENRY FLOOD.

Irish borough-owners, or Undertakers, who " under-
took " to carry on the king's business in consideration
of receiving the lion's share of the patronage, which
they distributed amongst their own adherents. Of
these borough-owners Lord Shannon was the happy
possessor of no less than sixteen seats, while others
had eight, ten, twelve, or more, which were regularly
and openly let out to hire to the Government. Efforts
were from time to time made by the more indepen-
dent members to curtail these abuses, and to recover
some degree of independence for the Parliament, but
for a long time their efforts were without avail, and
owing to the nature of its constitution, it was all but
impossible to bring public opinion to bear upon its
proceedings, so that the only vestige of independence
shown was when a collision occurred between the sel-
fish interests of those in whose hands all power was
thus concentrated.

About 1743 some stir began to be aroused by a
succession of statements published by Charles Lucas,
a Dublin apothecary, in the Freeman's Journal, a
newspaper started by him, and in which he vehe-
mently denounced the venality of Parliament, and
loudly asserted the inherent right of Ireland to govern
itself, a right of which it had only been formally
deprived by the Declaratory Act of George I.1 So
unequivocal was his language that the grand jury of
Dublin at last gave orders for his addresses to be
burnt, and in 1749 a warrant was issued for his appre-
hension, whereupon he fled to England, and did not
return until many years later, when he was at once
1 English Statutes, 6 Geo. c. 5.

HIS EARLY LIFE. 323

elected member for Dublin." His speeches in the
House of Commons seem never to have produced an
effect at all comparable with that of his writings, but
he gave a constant and important support to the
patriotic party, which had now formed itself into a
small but influential opposition under the leadership
of Henry Flood.

Flood and Grattan are by far the two greatest of
those orators and statesmen whose eloquence lit up the
debates of the Irish House of Commons during its
brief period of brilliancy, and as such will require,
even in so hasty a sketch as this, to be dwelt upon at
some length. Since a good deal of the same ground
will have to be gone over in succeeding chapters, it
seems best to explain here those points which affected
them personally, and to show as far as possible in
what relationship they stood one to the other.

Henry Flood was born near Kilkenny in 1732, and
was the son of the Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
At sixteen he went to Trinity College, Dublin, and
afterwards to Oxford. In 1759 he entered the Irish
Parliament as member for Kilkenny, and at once threw
himself vehemently upon the popular side, his first
speech being an attack upon the Primate Stone. As
an orator his style appears to have been laboured, and
his speeches brim over in all directions with forced illus-
trations and metaphors, but his powers of argument
and debate were remarkably strong. For about ten
years he waged a continual struggle against the
Government, urging especially a limitation to the
duration of Parliament and losing no opportunity of
asserting its claims to independence, or of attacking

RIGHT HON. HENRY FLOOD.
(After a drawing by Comerford.)

RECALL OF LORD TOWNSHEND. 325

the pension list, which under the system then pre-
vailing grew steadily from year to year. Upon reform
he also early fixed his attention, although, unlike
Grattan, he was from the beginning to the end of his
.life steadily hostile to all proposals for giving the
franchise to the Catholics.

During the viceroyalty of Lord Townshend, who
became Lord-Lieutenant in 1767, an Octennial Bill
was passed limiting the duration of Parliament to
eight years, but this momentary gleam of better
things was not sustained ; on the contrary, corruption
was, under his rule, carried even further than it had
been before. Under the plea of breaking the power
of the borough-owners, he set himself deliberately
to make the whole Parliament subservient to Govern-
ment, thus practically depriving it of what little
vestige of independence it still possessed. A succes-
sion of struggles took place, chiefly over Money Bills,
the more independent members, under Flood's leader-
ship, claiming for the Irish House of Commons the
complete control of the national purse, a claim as
uniformly resisted by the Government. Though
almost invariably defeated on a division in the end
the opposition were to a great degree successful, and
in 1773 trie hated viceroy was re-called.

This was the moment at which Flood stood higher
in his countrymen's estimation than was ever again
the case. He was identified with all that was best in
their aspirations, and no shadow of self-seeking had
as yet dimmed the brightness of his fame. It was
very different with his next step. Lord Townshend
was succeeded by Lord Harcourt, whose administra-

326 HENRY FLOOD.

tion at first promised to be a shade more liberal and
less corrupt than that of his predecessors. Of
this administration Flood, to his own misfortune,
became a member. What his motives were it is
rather difficult to say. He was a rich man, and there-
fore had no temptation to sel-1 or stifle his opinions for
place. Whatever they were, it is clear, from letters
still extant, that he not only accepted but solicited
office. He was made Vice- Treasurer, a post hitherto
reserved for Englishmen, at a salary of .£3,500 a year.
Although, as Mr. Lecky has pointed out, no actual
stain of dishonour attaches to Flood in consequence
of this step, there can be no doubt that it was a grave
error, and that he lived to repent it bitterly. For the
next seven years not only was he forced to keep silence
as regards all those points he had previously advocated
so warmly, but, as a member of the Government, he
actually helped to uphold some of the most damaging
of the restraints laid upon Irish trade and prosperity.
Upon the outbreak of the America war a two years'
embargo was laid upon Ireland, and a force of 4,000
men raised and despatched to America at its ex-
pense. The state of defencelessness in which this left
the country led, as will be seen in a succeeding chap-
ter, to a great volunteer movement, in which all classes
and creeds joined enthusiastically. Flood was unable
to resist the contagion. His voice was once again
heard upon the liberal side. He flung away the
trammels of office, surrendered his large salary, and
returned to his old friends. He never, however, re-
gained his old place. A greater man had in the
meanwhile risen to the front, and in Henry Grattan

FLOOD AS AN ENGLISH MEMBER. 327

Irish aspiration had found its clearest and strongest
voice.

This was a source of profound mortification
to Flood, and led eventually to a bitter quarrel
between these two men — patriots in the best sense
both of them. Flood tried to outbid Grattan by
pushing the concessions won from England in the
moment of her difficulty yet further, and by making
use of the volunteers as a lever to enforce his de-
mands. This Grattan honourably, whether wisely or
not, resisted, and the Parliament supported his resis-
tance. After an unsuccessful attempt to carry a
Reform Bill, Flood retired, to a great degree, from
Irish public life, and not long afterwards succeeded in
getting a seat in the English Parliament. His oratory
there proved a failure. He was " an oak of the
forest too great and old," as Grattan said, " to be
transplanted at fifty." This failure was a fresh and a
yet more mortifying disappointment, and his end was
a gloomy and somewhat obscure one, but he will
always be remembered with gratitude as one of the
first who in the Irish Parliament lifted his voice
against those restrictions under which the prosperity
of the country lay shackled and all but dead.

XLIX.

HENRY GRATTAN.

"GREAT men," wrote Sydney Smith, sixty years
ago in an article in TJie Edinburgh Review, " hallow
a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time.
What Irishman does not feel proud that he lived in
the days of Grattan ? Who has not turned to him for
comfort from the false friends and open enemies of
Ireland ? Who did not remember him in the days of
its burnings, wastings, and murders?"

Grattan is, indeed, pre-eminently the Irish politi-
cian to whom other Irish politicians — however diverse
their views or convictions — turn unanimously with the
common sense of admiration and homage. Two
characteristics— usually supposed in Ireland to be in-
herently antagonistic — met harmoniously in him.
He was consistently loyal and he was consistently
patriotic. From the beginning to the end of his career
his patriotism never hindered him either from risking
his popularity whenever he considered duty or the
necessities of the case required him to do so ; a reso-
lution which more than once brought him into sharp
collision with his countrymen, on one occasion even
at some little risk to himself.

RIGHT HON. HENRY GRATTAN, M.P.
(From an engraving by Godby after Pope.)

330 HENRY GRATTAN.

In 1775 he entered Parliament — sixteen years,
therefore, later than Flood — being brought in by his
friend Lord Charlemont. The struggle with America
was then beginning, and all Grattan's sympathies
went with those colonists who were battling for their
own independence. His eloquence from the moment
it was first heard produced an extraordinary effect,
and when the volunteer movement broke out he threw
himself heartily into it, and availed himself of it to
press in the Irish Parliament for those measures of
free trade and self-government upon which his heart
was set. When the first of these measures was car-
ried, he brought forward the famous Declaration of
Rights, embodying the demand for independence, a
demand which, in the first instance, he had to defend
almost single-handed. Many of his best friends
hung back, believing the time to be not yet ripe
for such a proposal. Even Edmund Burke — the
life-long and passionate friend of Ireland — cried out
in alarm "Will no one speak to that madman ? Will
no one stop that madman Grattan ? " The madman,
however, went on undismayed. His words flew like
wildfire over the country. He was supported in his
motion by eighteen counties, by addresses from the
grand juries, and by resolutions from the volunteers.
By 1782, the impulse had grown so strong that it
could no longer be resisted. An address in favour of
Grattan's Declaration of Rights was carried enthu-
siastically in April by the Irish Parliament, and so
impressed was the Government by the determined
attitude of the country that, by the 27th of May the
Viceroy was empowered to announce the concurrence

THE DECLARATION Of RIGHTS. 33!

of the English legislature. The Declaratory Act of
George I. was then repealed by the English Parliament.
Bills were immediately a'fterwards passed by the
Irish one embodying the Declaration of Rights,
also a biennial Mutiny Act, artel an Act validating
the marriage of Dissenters, while, above all, Poynings'
Act, which had so long fettered its free action, was
once for all repealed.

This was the happiest moment of Grattan's life.
The country, with a burst of spontaneous gratitude,
voted him a grant of ;£ 100,000. This sum he declined,
but in the end was persuaded, with some reluctance,
to take half. A period of brief, but while it lasted
unquestionable prosperity spread over the country.
In Dublin, public buildings sprang up in all direc-
tions ; a bright little society flourished and enjoyed
itself; trade too prospered to a degree never hitherto
known. Between England and Ireland, however, the
commercial restrictions were still in force. The
condition of the Irish Catholics, though latterly to
some degree alleviated, was still one of all but un-
endurable oppression. Reform, too, was as far off as
ever, and corruption had increased rather than
diminished, owing to the greatly increased importance
of the Parliament. In 1789 an unfortunate quarrel
sprang up between the two legislatures over the ap-
pointment of a Regent, rendered necessary by the
temporary insanity of George III., and this difference
was afterwards used as an argument in favour of a
legislative Union. In 1793 a measure of half-emanci-
pation was granted, Roman Catholics being admitted
to vote, though not to sit in Parliament, an anomalous

332 HENRY GRATTAN.

distinction giving power to the ignorant, yet still
keeping the fittest men out of public life. Upon the
arrival of Lord Fitzwilliam as Viceroy in 1795, it
was fervently believed that full emancipation was at
last about to be granted, and Grattan brought in a
Bill to that effect. These hopes, as will presently
be seen, were destined to be bitterly disappointed.
Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled, and from that
moment Grattan was doomed to stand helplessly by
and watch the destruction of that edifice which he
had spent his whole life to erect and strengthen. The
country grew more and more restless, and it was plain
to all who could read the signs of the times that,
unless discontent was in some way allayed, a rebellion
was sure to break out. In 1798 this long foreseen
calamity occurred, but before it did so, Grattan had
retired heart-broken and despairing into private life.

He re-emerged to plead, vehemently but fruitlessly,
against the Union which was passed the following
spring. As will be seen, when we reach that period
the fashion in which that act was carried made it
difficult for an honourable man, however loyal — and
no man, it must be repeated, was more steadily loyal
than Henry Grattan — to give it his support. He
believed too firmly that Ireland could work out its
own destiny best by the aid of a separate Parliament,
and to this opinion he throughout his life clung. In
his own words, "The two countries from their size
must stand together — united quoad nature — distinct
quoad legislation."

In 1805 he became a member of the English Par-
liament, where unlike Flood, his eloquence had almost

HIS DEATH. 333

as much effect as in Ireland, and where he was regarded
by all parties with the deepest respect and regard.
His heart, however, remained firmly anchored to its
old home, and all his recollections in his old age
centred around these earlier struggles. He died in
1820, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. One
more quotation from Sydney Smith sums up the
man for us in a few words : " The highest attainments
of human genius were within his reach, but he thought
the noblest occupation of a man was to make other men
happy and free, and in. that straight line he kept for
fifty years, without one side-look, one yielding thought,
one motive in his heart which might not have laid
open to the view of God or man." A generation which
produced two such men as Henry Grattan and
Edmund Burke might well be looked back to by any
country in the world as the flower and crown of its
national life. There have not been many greater or
better in the whole chequered history of the human
race.

THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.

THE revolt of the English Colonies in America,
although it evoked no disloyalty, had a strong and
unforeseen influence upon the equally English colony
in Ireland. It would have been strange had it not
done so. The circumstances of the two colonies
— looking at Ireland merely in that light — were in
many respects all but identical. If England could
tax America without the consent of its representa-
tives, then, equally it could tax Ireland, in which
case the long struggles lately waged by Flood, Grat-
tan, and others in the Irish Parliament over Money
Bills would be definitely decided against it. Com-
pared to Ireland, America indeed had little to com-
plain of. The restrictions which held back Irish
commerce still existed in almost all their pristine
force. The woollen trade, save for some very trifling
home consumption, was practically dead ; even the
linen trade, which had been promised encourage-
ment, had hitherto hardly received any. Bounties had
been offered, on the contrary, to English woollen
manufacturers, and duties levied on Irish sail-cloth,
which had effectually put a stop to that important

CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 335

branch of the trade. Another cause had also affected
commerce seriously. The manufacturers of the north,
were almost to a man Presbyterian, and the laws
against Presbyterians had been pressed with almost
as much severity as against Catholics. Under the
rule of Archbishops Boulter, Hoadly, and Stone, who
had in succession governed the country, the Test
Act had been employed with a suicidal severity,
which had driven thousands of industrious men to
join their brethren in America, where they could
worship in peace, and where their presence was before
long destined to produce a formidable effect upon the
impending struggle.

The whole condition of the country was miserable
in the extreme. Agriculture was at the lowest
possible ebb. The Irish farmers, excluded from the
English and all foreign markets, were reduced to
destitution. Land was offered at fourteen and twelve .
years' purchase, and even at those prices found no
buyers. Many of the principal landowners were
absentees, and though the rents themselves do not
seem as a rule to have been high, the middlemen, by
whom the land was commonly taken, ground the
wretched peasants under them to powder with their
exactions. While everything else was thus steadily
shrinking, the pension list was swelling until it stood
not far short of ^"100,000. The additional troops
recently raised in Ireland had been sent to America,
and their absence had left the country all but defence-
less. In 1779, an attempt was made to carry out a
levy of militia, in which Prostestants only were to be
enrolled, and an Act passed for the purpose. It failed

336 THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.

utterly, for so miserably bankrupt was the condition of
the Irish Government, that it was found impossible
to collect money to pay the men, and the scheme in
consequence had to be given up.

It proved, however, to be the parent of a really
successful one. In the same year a volunteer move-
ment sprang into sudden existence. Belfast had
been left empty of troops, and was hourly in fear of
a French descent, added to which it was harassed by
the dread of a famous pirate of the period, called
Paul Jones. Under these circumstances its citizens
resolved to enrol themselves for their own defence.
The idea, once started, flew through the country like
wild-fire. The old fighting spirit sprang to sudden
life at the cry to arms. After three-quarters of a
century of torpor all was stir and animation. In
every direction the gentry were enrolling their tenants,
the sons of the great houses officering the corps and
drilling their own retainers. Merchants, peers, mem-
bers of Parliament all vied with one another, and in a
few months' time nearly 60,000 men had been enrolled.

Although a good deal alarmed at the rapidity of
this movement, the Government could not very well
refuse to let the country arm in its own defence, and
16,000 stand of arms, which had been brought over
for the projected militia, were after a while distributed.
The greatest pride was felt in the completeness and
perfection of the equipments. Reviews were held,
and, for once, national sentiment and loyalty seemed
to have struck hands.

Hardly, too, were the volunteers enrolled before it
began to be felt what a power was thus conferred

JAMES CAULFIELD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT, COMMANDER OF THE

IRISH VOLUNTEERS.
(From an etching after a picture by Hogarth. )

338 THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.

upon that party which had so long pleaded in vain for
the relief of Ireland from those commercial disabilities
under which it still laboured. Although the whole
tone of the volunteers was loyal, and although their
principal leader, Lord Charlemont, was a man of the
utmost tact and moderation, it was none the less
clear that an appeal backed by 60,000 men in arms
acquired a weight and momentum which no previous
Irish appeal had ever even approached.

In October of the same year Parliament met, and
an amendment to the address was moved by Grattan,
demanding a right of free export and import. Then
Flood rose in his place, still holding office, and pro-
posed that the more comprehensive words Free Trade
should be adopted. It was at once agreed to and
carried unanimously. Next day the whole House of
Commons went in a body to present the address to
the Lord-Lieutenant, the volunteers lining the streets
and presenting arms as they went by.

The Government were startled. Lord Buckingham-
shire, the Lord-Lieutenant, wrote to England to say
that the trade restrictions must be repealed, or he
would not answer for the consequences. Lord North,
the Prime Minister, yielded, and a Bill of repeal
were brought in, allowing Ireland free export and
import to foreign countries and to the English
Colonies. When the news reached Dublin, the utmost
delight and excitement prevailed. Bonfires were lit,
houses in Dublin illuminated, the volunteers fired
salvoes of rejoicing, and addresses of gratitude were
forthwith forwarded to England.

The next step in the upward progress has been

LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE. 339

already partially described in the chapter dealing
with Grattan. At the meeting of Parliament in 1782,
the Declaration of Rights proposed by him was
passed, and urgently pressed upon the consideration
of the Government. The moment was exceptionally
favourable. Lord North's Ministry had by this time
fallen, after probably the most disastrous tenure of
office that had ever befallen any English adminis-
tration. America had achieved her independence,
and England was in no mood for embarking upon
fresh struggle with another of her dependencies.
In Ireland the Ulster volunteers had lately met at
Dungannon, and passed unanimous resolutions in
favour of Grattan's proposal, and their example had
been speedily followed all over Ireland. The Whig
Ministry, now in power, was known to be not unfavour-
able to the cause which the Irish patriots had at
heart. A Bill was brought forward and carried,
revoking the recent Declaratory Acts which bound
the Irish Parliament, and giving it the right to legis-
late for itself. Poynings' Act was thereupon repealed,
and a number of independent Acts, as already stated,
passed by the now emancipated Irish Parliament.
The legislative independence was an accomplished
fact.

The objects of the volunteers' existence was now
over. The American war was at an end, the inde-
pendence of the Parliament assured, and it was
felt therefore, by all moderate men, that it was now
time for them to disband. Flood, who had now
again joined the patriotic party, was strongly op-
posed to this. He pressed forward his motion for

34O THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.

"simple repeal," and was supported by Lord Bristol}
the Bishop of Derry, a scatter-brained prelate, who
had been bitten by a passion for military glory, and
would have been perfectly willing to see the whole
country plunged into bloodshed. A better and more
reasonable plea on Flood's part was that reform was
the crying necessity of the hour, and ought to be
carried while the volunteers were still enrolled, and
the effect already produced by their presence was
still undiminished. Grattan also desired reform,
but held that the time for carrying it was not
yet ripe. A vehement debate ensued, and bitter
recriminations were exchanged. A convention of
volunteers was at the moment being held in Dublin,
and Flood endeavoured to make use of their presence
there to get his Reform Bill passed. This the House
regarded as a menace, and after a violent debate his
Bill was thrown out. There was a moment during which
it seemed as if the volunteers were about to try the
question by force of arms. More prudent counsels,
however, prevailed, and, greatly to their credit, they
consented a week later to lay down their arms, and
retire peaceably to their own homes.

LI.

DANGER SIGNALS.

THE significant warnings uttered by Flood and
others against the danger of postponing reform until
the excitement temporarily awakened upon* the sub-
ject had subsided and the volunteers disbanded,
proved, unfortunately, to be only too well justified.
Where Flood, however, had erred, had been in failing to
see that a reform which left three-fourths of the people
of the country unrepresented, could never be more
than a reform in name. This error Grattan never
made. During the next ten or twelve years, his efforts
were steadily and continually directed to obtaining
equal political power for all his fellow-countrymen
alike. Reform was indeed the necessity of the hour.
The corruption of Parliament was increasing rather
than diminishing. From 130 to 140 of its members
were tied by indissoluble knots to the Government,
and could only vote as by it directed. Most of these
were the nominees of the borough-owners; many
held places or enjoyed pensions terminable at the
pleasure of the king, and at the smallest sign of in-
subordination or independence instant pressure was

342 DANGER SIGNALS.

brought to bear upon them until they returned to
their obedience.

Although free now to import and export from the
rest of the world no change with regard to Ireland's
commercial intercourse with Great Britain had as yet
taken place. In 1785, a number of propositions were
drawn up by the Dublin Parliament, to enable the
importation of goods through Great Britain into
Ireland, or vice versa, without any increase of duty.
These propositions were agreed to by Pitt, then
Prime Minister, and were brought forward by him in
the English House of Commons. Again, however,
commercial jealousy stepped in. A number of Eng-
lish towns remonstrated vehemently ; one petition
despatched to the House alone bearing the signature
of 80,000 Lancashire manufacturers. "Greater panic,"
it was said at the time, "could not have been expressed
had an invasion been in question." The result was,
that a number of modifications were made to the
propositions, and when returned to Ireland, so pro-
foundly had they been altered, that the patriotic
party refused to accept them, and although when the
division came on, the Government obtained a majority
it was so small that the Bill was allowed to drop, and
thus the whole scheme came to nothing.

Outside Parliament, meanwhile, the country was in
a very disturbed state. Long before this local riots
and disturbances had broken out, especially in the
south. As early as 1762, secret societies, known under
the generic name of Whiteboys, had inspired terror
throughout Munster, especially in the counties of
Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary. These risings, as

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.
(From an engraving by Jones after Romney.}

344 DANGER SIGNALS.

has been clearly proved by Mr. Lecky, had little, if
any, connection with either politics or religion. Their
cause lay, as he shows, on the very surface, in the all
but unendurable misery in which the great mass of
the people were sunk.

Lord Chesterfield, one of the few Lord-Lieutenants
who had really attempted to understand Ireland, had
years before spoken in unmistakeable language on this
point. Subletting was almost universal, three or four
persons standing often between the landowner and
the actual occupier, the result being that the condition
of the latter was one of chronic semi-starvation. So
little was disloyalty at the root of the matter, that
in a contemporary letter, written by Robert Fitz-
gerald, the Knight of Kerry, it is confidently asserted
that, were a recruiting officer to be sent to the dis-
trict, the people would gladly flock to the standard
of the king, although, he significantly adds, " it seems
to me equally certain that if the enemy effects a land-
ing within a hundred miles of these people, they will
most assuredly join them." x

The tithe system was another all but unendurable
burden, and it was against the tithe proctors that the
worst of the Whiteboy outrages were committed.
That these outrages had little directly to say to
religion is, however, clear, from the fact that the
tithe system was nearly as much detested by the Pro-
testant landowners as by their tenants. In the north
risings of a somewhat similar character had broken
out chiefly amongst Protestants of the lower classes,

1 " History of England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iv.
p. 340.

THE "PEEP OF DAY" BOYS. 345

who gathered themselves into bands under the name
of " Oak boys " and " Steel boys." The grievances of
which they complained being, however, for the most
part after a while repealed, they gradually dispersed,
and were heard of no more. In the south it was
otherwise, and the result has been that Whiteboy con-
spiracies continued, under different names, to be a
terror to the country, and have so continued down to
our own day.

As long as the volunteers remained embodied
there was an all but complete cessation of these local
disturbances, but upon their disbandment they broke
out with renewed force. Many too of the volun-
teers themselves, who, although disbanded, retained
their arms, began to fall under new influences, and
to lose their earlier reputation. " What had originally,"
in Grattan's words, " been the armed property of Ireland,
was becoming its armed beggary." A violent sectarian
spirit, too, was beginning to show itself afresh, although
as yet chiefly amongst the lowest and most igno-
rant classes. A furious faction war had broken out in
the North of Ireland, between Protestants and Roman
Catholics. The former had made an association
known as the " Peep-of-day boys," to which the latter
had responded by one called the "Defenders." In 1705
a regular battle was fought between the two, and the
" Defenders " were defeated with the loss of many
lives. The same year saw the institution of Orange
Lodges spring into existence, and spread rapidly over
the north. Amongst the more educated classes a
strongly revolutionary feeling was beginning to spread,
especially in Belfast. The passionate sympathy of

346 DANGER SIGNALS.

the Presbyterians for America had awakened a
vehemently republican spirit, and the rising tide
of revolution in France, found a loudly reverberating
echo in Ireland, especially amongst the younger men.
In 1791 in Belfast, the well-known "Society of
United Irishmen " came into existence and its
leaders were eager to combine this democratic
movement in the north with the recently recon-
structed Roman Catholic committee in Dublin. All
these, it is plain, were elements of danger which
required careful watching. The one hope, the one
necessity, as all who were not blinded by passion or
prejudice saw plainly, lay in a reformed Parliament —
one which would represent, no longer a section, but the
whole community. To combine to procure this, and
to sink all religious differences in the common weal,
was the earnest desire of all who genuinely cared for
their country, whether within or without the Parlia-
ment. Of this programme, the members even of
the United Irishmen were, in the first instance,
ardent exponents, and their demands, ostensibly
at least, extended no further. In the words of the
oath administered to new members, they desired to for-
ward " an identity of interests, a communion of rights,
and a union amongst Irishmen of all religious per-
suasions, without which every reform in Parliament
must be partial, not national, inadequate to the wants,
delusive to the wishes, and insufficient for the freedom
and happiness of the country."

LIL

THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT.

THE eagerness shown at this time by the principal
Irish Protestants to give full emancipation to their
Roman Catholic countrymen is eminently creditable to
them, and stands in strong relief to the bitterness on
both sides, both in earlier and latter times. By I792_
there seems to have been something almost like unan-
imity on the subject. What reads strangest perhaps
to our ears, 600 Belfast Protestant householders warmly
pressed the motion on the Government. In a work,
published six years earlier, Lord Sheffield, though him-
self opposed to emancipation, puts this unanimity in
unmistakable words. " It is curious," he says, " to
observe one-fifth or one-sixth of a nation in possession
of all the power and property of the country, eager to
communicate that power to the remaining four-fifths,
which would, in effect, entirely transfer it from them-
selves."

The generation to which Flood, Lucas, and Lord
Charlmont had belonged, and who were almost to a
man opposed to emancipation, was fast passing away,
and amongst the more independent men of the younger
generation there were few who had not been won over

("A man of importance.")

THE EARL OF MOIRA.

By Gillray.

PITT AND EMANCIPATION. 349

to Grattan's view of the matter. In England, too, cir-
cumstances were beginning to push many, even of those
hitherto bitterly hostile to concession, in the same
direction. The growing terror of the French Revolu-
tion had loosened the bonds of the party, and the
hatred which existed between the Jacobins and the
Catholic clerical party, inclined the Government to
extend the olive branch to the latter in hopes of
thereby securing their support. Pitt was personally
friendly to emancipation, and in December, 1792, a
deputation of five delegates from the Catholic con-
vention in Dublin was graciously received by the
king himself, and returned under the impression that
all religious disabilities were forthwith to be abolished.
Next month, January, 1793, at the meeting of the
Irish Parliament, a Bill was brought in giving the
right of voting to all Catholic forty-shilling freeholders,
and throwing open also to Catholics the municipal
franchise in the towns. Although vehemently opposed
by the Ascendency, this Bill, being supported by the
Opposition, passed easily and received the royal
assent upon April gth.

It was believed to be only an instalment of full and
free emancipation soon to follow. In 1794, several
of the more moderate Whigs, including Edmund
Burke and Lord Fitzwilliam, left Fox, and joined
Pitt. One of the objects of the Whig members of
this new coalition was the admission of Irish Roman
Catholics to equal rights with their Protestant fellow-
country men. To this Pitt at first demurred, but in
the end agreed to grant it subject to certain stipu-
lations, and Lord Fitzwilliam was accordingly

350 THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT.

appointed Lord-Lieutenant, and arrived in Ireland
in January, 1795.

His appointment awakened the most vehement and
widely expressed delight. He was known to be
a warm supporter of emancipation. He was a
personal friend of Grattan's, and a man in whom
all who had the interests of their country at heart
believed that they could confide. He had himself
declared emphatically that he would "never have
taken office unless the Roman Catholics were to be
relieved from every disqualification." He was received
in Dublin with enthusiastic rejoicings. Loyal addresses
from Roman Catholics poured in from every part of
Ireland. Large supplies were joyfully voted by the
Irish Parliament, and, although he reported in a letter
to the Duke of Portland that the disaffection amongst
the lower orders was very great, on the other hand the
better educated of the Roman Catholics were loyal to a
man. For the moment the party of disorder seemed
indeed to have vanished. Grattan, though he refused
to take office, gave all the great weight of his support
to the Government, and obtained leave to bring in an
Emancipation Bill with hardly a dissentient voice.
The extreme Jacobine party ceased apparently for
the moment to have any weight in the country. Revo-
lution seemed to be scotched, and the dangers into
which Ireland had been seen awhile before to be
rapidly hastening, appeared to have passed away.

Suddenly all was changed. On February I2th,
leave to bring in a Bill for the admission of Roman
Catholics to Parliament was moved by Grattan. On
February Qth, a letter reached Lord Fitzwilliam from

RECALL OF FITZWILLIAM. 35!

Pitt, which showed that some changes had taken place
in the intentions of the Government, but no suspicion
of the extent of those changes was as yet entertained.
On February 23rd, however, the Duke of Portland
wrote, "by the king's command," authorizing Lord
Fitzwilliam to resign. The law officers and other
officials who had been displaced were thereupon re-
stored to their former places. G rattan's Bill was
hopelessly lost, and all the elements of rebellion and
disaffection at once began to seethe and ferment
again.

What strikes one most in studying these proceed-
ings is the curious folly of the whole affair! Why was
a harbinger of peace sent if only to be immediately
recalled ? Why were the hopes of the Roman Catho-
lics, of the whole country in fact, raised to the highest
pitch of expectation, if only that they might be dashed
to the ground ? Pitt no doubt had a very difficult
part to play. George III. was all his life vehemently
opposed to the admission of Roman Catholics to Par-
liament. Two of the officials whom Fitzwilliam
had dismissed, Cooke, the Under Secretary of State>
and Beresford, the Chief Commissioner of Customs,
were men of no little influence, and Beresford,
immediately upon his arrival in England had had a
personal interview with the king. That Pitt knew how
critical was the situation in Ireland is certain. He was
not, however, prepared to resign office, and short of
that step it was impossible to bring sufficient pressure
to bear upon the king's obstinacy. His own preference
ran strongly towards a Union of the two countries,
and with this end in view, he is often accused of

352 THE F1TZWILL1AM DISAPPOINTMENT.

having been cynically indifferent as to what disasters
and horrors Ireland might be destined to wade
through to that consummation. This it is difficult to
conceive ; nevertheless, there can be no doubt that
the rising of four years later dated from this decision,
and was almost as directly due to it as if the latter
had been planned with that object.

From this point the stream runs darkly and steadily
to the end. Lord Fitzwilliam's departure was regarded
by Protestants and Catholics alike as a national
calamity. In Dublin shops were shut ; people put on
mourning, and his carriage was followed to the boat
by lamenting crowds. Grattan's Bill was of course
lost, and the exasperation of the Catholics rendered
tenfold by the disappointment " The demon of dark-
ness," it was said, " could not have done more mischief
had he come from hell to throw a fire-brand amongst
the people."

Henceforward the Irish Parliament drops away into
all but complete insignificance. After two or three
abortive efforts to again bring forward reform, Grattan
gave up the hopeless attempt, and retired broken-
hearted from public life. The " United Irishmen," in
the first instance an open political body, inaugurated
and chiefly supported by Protestants, now rapidly
changed its character. Its leaders were now all
at heart republicans, and thoroughly impregnated
with the leaven of the French Revolution. It was
suppressed and apparently broken up by the Govern-
ment in 1795, but was almost immediately afterwards
reconstructed and re-organized upon an immense
scale. Every member was bound to take an oath

THE " UNITED IRISHMEN.'

353

of secrecy, and its avowed object had become the
erection by force of a republican form of Government
in Ireland. The rebellion was bound to come now,
and only accident could decide how soon.

:-;Kx,

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.
(Front a sketch from life.)

Lilt

'NINETY-EIGHT.

IT was not long delayed. The Society of United
Irishmen had now grown to be little more than a mere
nest of Jacobinism, filled with all the turbulent and
disaffected elements afloat in the whole country. Of
this society Wolfe Tone was the creator, guide, and
moving spirit Any one who wishes to understand the
movement rather as it originally took shape than in
the form which it assumed when accident had de-
prived it of all its leaders, should carefully study his
autobiography. As he reads its transparent pages,
brimful of all the foolish, generous enthusiasms of the
day, he will find it not a little hard, I think, to avoid
some amount of sympathy with the man, however
much he may, and probably will, reprobate the cause
which he had so at heart.

Amongst the other leaders of the rising were Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, a brother of the Duke of Leinster,
Arthur O'Connor, a nephew of Lord Longueville,
Thomas Addis Emmett, elder brother of the better
known Robert Emmett — whose attempted rebellion in
1803, was a sort of postscript to this earlier one — and
the two Sheare brothers. Compared to Wolfe Tone,

ATD FROM FRANCE. 355

however, all these were mere amateurs in insurrection,
and pale and shadowy dabblers in rebellion. Lord
Edward was an amiable warm-hearted visionary^
high-minded and gallant, but without much ballast, and
to a great degree under the guidance of others. The
mainspring of the whole movement, as has been seen,
was Protestant and Northern, and now that all hope
of constitutional reform was gone, it was resolved to
appeal openly to force and to call in the aid of the
enemies of England to assist in the coming struggle.
Insane as the idea appears, looked back at from
this distance, it evidently was not viewed in the same
light by those at hand. England and France, it must
be remembered, were at fierce war, and a descent
upon the Irish coast was then, as afterwards by
Napoleon, regarded as a natural and obvious part of
the aggressive policy of the latter. In the summer of
1796 Lord Edward Fitzgerald went to Paris to open
negotiations with the French Directory, and there
met Wolfe Tone, who had been induced some time
before to leave Ireland in order to avoid arrest. Lord
Edward's Orleanist connection proving a bar to his
negotiations, he left Paris, and the whole of the
arrangements devolved into the latter's hand. He
so fired Carnot, one of the Directory, and still more
General Hoche, with a belief of the feasibility of
his scheme of descent, that, in December of the
same year a French fleet of forty-three vessels con-
taining fifteen thousand troops were actually de-
spatched under Hoche's command, Wolfe Tone being
on board of one of them, which vessels, slipping past
the English fleet in the Channel, bore down upon

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE.
(From a lithograph after a sketch by Hullmandel.}

HOCHE RETURNS TO FRANCE. 357

the Irish coast, and suddenly appeared off Cape
Clear.

All Ireland was thrown into the wildest panic.
There were only a small body of troops in the south
and not a war-ship upon the coast. The peasantry
of the district, it is true, showed no disposition to rise,
but for all that had the French landed, nothing could
have hindered them from marching upon the capital.
But — " those ancient and unsubsidised allies of Eng-
land upon which English ministers depend as much for
saving kingdoms as washerwomen for drying clothes,"
— the winds again stood true to their ancient alliance.
The vessel with Hoche on board got separated from the
rest of the fleet, and while the troops were waiting for
him to arrive a violent gale accompanied with snow
suddenly sprang up. The fleet moved on to Bear
Island, and tried to anchor there, but the storm in-
creased, the shelter was insufficient, the vessels
dragged their anchors, were driven out to sea and
forced to return to Brest. The ship containing
Hoche had before this been forced to put back to
France, and so ended the first and by far the most
formidable of the perils which threatened England
under this new combination.

One very unfortunate result of the narrowness

of this escape was that the Irish Executive — stung

by the sense of their own supineness, and utterly

scared by the recent peril — threw themselves into

the most violent and arbitrary measures of. repression.

fThe Habeas Corpus Act had already been suspended,

land now martial law was proclaimed in five of the

/northern counties at once. The committee of the

358 'NINETY-EIGHT,

United Irishmen was seized, the office of their organ
The Northern Star destroyed, and an immense
number of people hurried into gaol. What was
much more serious throughout the proclaimed dis-
tricts, the soldiery and militia regiments which had
been brought over from England were kept under no
discipline, but were allowed to ill-use the population
almost at their own discretion. Gross excesses were
committed, whole villages being in some instances
plundered and the people turned adrift, while half
hangings, floggings and picketings, were freely re-
sorted to to extort confessions of concealed arms.

Against these measures — so calculated to precipi-
tate a rising, and by which the innocent and well-dis-
posed suffered no less than the guilty — Grattan,
Ponsonby, and other members of the Opposition
protested vehemently. They also drew up and laid
before the House a Bill of reform which, if passed,
would, they pledged themselves, effectually allay the
agitation and content all but the most irreconcilable.
Their efforts, however, were utterly vain. Many of
the members of the House of Commons were them-
selves in a state of panic, and therefore impervious
to argument. The motion was defeated by an
enormous majority, a general election was close at
hand, and feeling the fruitlessness of further struggle
Grattan, as already stated, refused to offer himself
for re-election, and retired despairingly from the
scene.

The commander-in-chief, Lord Carhampton and
his subordinate General Lake were the two men
directly responsible for the misconduct of the troops

FRESH CONSPIRACIES. 359

in Ireland. So disgraceful had become the license
allowed that loud complaints were made in both the
English Houses of Parliament, in consequence of
which Lord Carhampton was recalled and Sir Ralph
Abercromby sent in his place. He more than en-
dorsed the worst of the accounts which had been
forwarded. " Every cruelty that could be committed
by Cossacks or Calmucks," he states, " has been com-
mitted here." "The manner in which the troops have
been employed would ruin," he adds, "the best in
Europe." He at once set himself to change the system,
to keep the garrison in the principal 'towns, and to
forbid the troops acting except under the immediate
direction of a magistrate. The Irish Executive
however was in no mood to submit to these prudent
restrictions. Angry disputes broke out. Lord
Camden, the Lord-Lieutenant, vacillated from side
to side, and the end was that in April, 1797, Sir
Ralph Abercromby indignantly resigned the com-
mand, which then fell into General Lake's hands,
and matters again went on as before.

Meanwhile the failure of the French descent under
Hoche, and the defeat of the Dutch fleet at the battle
of Camperdown in the autumn of 1797, had determined
Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the other chiefs of
the executive committee to attempt an independent
rising. Wolfe Tone was still in France, eagerly
endeavouring to bring about a fresh expedition, so
that their councils had not even the advantage of
his guidance. The Government had full information
of all their proceedings, being kept well informed
by spies, several of whom were actually enrolled in

LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD.
{After a picture by Hamilton.}

CAPTURE AND DEATH OF FITZGERALD. 361

the association. In March, 1798, a sudden descent was
made upon the executive committee, which had met
at the house of a man called Bond, and a number
of delegates and several leaders arrested. Lord
Edward, however, received warning and went into
concealment, and it was while in hiding that he
hastily concerted a scheme for a general rising, which
was now definitely fixed to take place upon the 24th
of May.

Only a few days before this date his hiding-place
was betrayed to the Government by a man named
Magan. A guard of soldiers was sent to arrest him,
and a desperate struggle took place, in the course of
which the captain of the guard was fatally stabbed,
while Lord Edward himself received a bullet on the
shoulder from the effects of which he shortly after-
wards died in goal. Within a day or two of his arrest
all the other leaders in Dublin were also seized and
thrown into prison.

The whole of the executive committee were thus
removed at one blow, and the conspiracy left with-
out head. In estimating the hideous character finally
assumed by the rising this fact must never be
forgotten. The sickening deeds committed while it
was at its height were committed by a mass of
ignorant men, maddened by months of oppression, and
deprived of their leaders at the very moment they
most required their control.

In the meantime the 24th of May had come,
and the rising had broken out. The non-arrival
of the daily mail-coaches was to be the signal,
and these were stopped and burnt by the insur-

362 'NINETY-EIGHT.

gents in four different directions at once. In
Kildare and Meath scattered parties of soldiers and
yeomanry were attacked and killed, and at Pros-
perous the barracks were set on fire, and the troops
quartered in it all burnt or piked. In Dublin
prompt measures had been taken, and the more loyal
citizens had enrolled themselves for their own de-
fence, so that no rising took place there, the result
being that the outlying insurgents found themselves
isolated. In the north especially, w'here the whole
movement had taken its rise, and where the revo-
lutionists had long been organized, the actual rising
was thus of very trifling importance, and the whole
thing was easily stamped out within a week.

It was very different in Wexford. Here from the
beginning the rising had assumed a religious shape,
and was conducted with indescribable barbarity.
Yeomanry corps and bodies of militia had been
quartered in the county for months, and many acts
of tyranny had been committed. These were
now hideously avenged. Several thousand men and
women, armed chiefly with pikes and scythes, collected
together on the hill of Oulart under the guidance of
a priest named Father John Murphy. They were
attacked by a small party of militia from Wexford,
but defeating them, burst into Ferns, where they burnt
the bishop's palace, then hastened on to Enniscorthy,
which they took possession of, and a few days after-
wards appeared before the town of Wexford.

Here resistance was at first offered them by Colonel
Maxwell, who was in command of the militia regi-
ments. Nearly all the Roman Catholics, however

MASSACRE OF PROTESTANTS. 363

under his orders deserted, the rest grew disorganized
and fled, and the end was that the militia departed and
the rebels took possession triumphantly of the town.
It at once became the scene of horrible outrages.
Houses were plundered ; many of the Protestant
citizens murdered ; others dragged from their homes,
and cruelly maltreated. Bagenal Harvey, a United
Irishman and a Protestant, who had been imprisoned
at Wexford by the Government, was released and
elected general of the rebels. He found himself,
however, utterly unable to control them. A camp had
been formed upon Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, and
from it as a centre the whole district was overrun, with
the exception of New Ross, where most of the available
troops had been concentrated. The wretched Pro-
testants, kept prisoners on Vinegar Hill, were daily
taken out in batches, and slaughtered in cold blood,
while at Scullabogue, after an unsuccessful attempt
on the part of the rebels to take New Ross, the most
•frightful episode of the whole rising occurred ; a barn
containing over a hundred and eighty Protestant
loyalists collected from the country round being set
on fire, and all of them perishing in the flames.

In the meanwhile troops were rapidly arriving from
Dublin. Arklow and New Ross had defended them-
selves gallantly, and the rebels had fallen back from
them repulsed. Vinegar Hill was attacked upon June
2 ist by General Lake, and after a struggle the rebels
fled precipitately, and were slaughtered in great
numbers. The day before this Father Roche and the
rebels under him were met outside Wexford and also
put to flight after hard fighting. Inside the town a

364 'NINETY-EIGHT.

horrible butchery was the same day perpetrated by
a body of ruffians upon over ninety Protestant
prisoners, who were slaughtered with great cruelty
upon the bridge leading to New Ross, and only the
passionate intervention of a priest named Corrin
hindered the deaths of many more.

With the recapture of Wexford and Vinegar Hill
the struggle ended. Such of the rebels as had escaped
the infuriated soldiery fled to hide themselves in
Wicklow and elsewhere. Father Michael Murphy —
believed by his followers to be bullet proof — had been
already killed during the attack on Arklow. Father
Roche was hung by Lake's order over the bridge at
Wexford, the scene of the late massacres. So also
was the unfortunate Bagenal Harvey, the victim
rather than the accomplice of the crimes of others.
Father John Murphy was caught and hung at Tallow,
as were also other priests in different parts of the
country. The rising had been just long enough, and
just formidable enough, to awaken the utmost terror
and the most furious thirst for vengeance, yet not
formidable enough to win respect for itself from a
military point of view. As a result the retribution
exacted was terrible ; the scenes of violence which
followed being upon a scale which went far to cause
even the excesses committed by the rebels themselves
to pale into insignificance.

Two final incidents, either of which a few months
earlier might have produced formidable results, brings
the dismal story to an end. In August, just after the
rising had been definitely stamped out, General
Humbert with a little over a thousand French troops

DEATH OF WOLFE TONE. 365

under his command landed at Killala, where he was
joined, if hardly reinforced, by a wild, mob of unarmed
peasants. From Killala he advanced to Ballina, de-
feated General Lake, who was sent against him, and
moved on to Sligo. Shortly afterwards, however, he
found himself, after crossing the Shannon, confronted
with an overwhelming force under Lord Cornwallis,
who had recently succeeded Lord Camden, and
held double offices of Lord-Lieutenant and Com-
mander-in-chief. Yielding to the inevitable, Humbert
surrendered at discretion, and he and his men were
received with due courtesy as prisoners of war. The
account given by the bishop of Killala who was kept
prisoner while that town was occupied by the French,
will be found to be extremely well worth reading.

The last scene of the drama brings Wolfe Tone
appropriately back upon the gloomy stage. When
General Humbert sailed for Killala a much larger
French force under General Hardi had remained behind
at Brest. In September this second detachment sailed,
Wolfe Tone being on board the principal vessel called
the Hoche. Outside Lough Swilly they were overtaken
by an English squadron, and a desperate struggle
ensued. The smaller French vessels escaped, but the
Hoche was so riddled with shot and shell as to be
forced to surrender, and was towed by the victors into
Lough Swilly. Here the French officers including
Wolfe Tone were hospitably entertained at dinner by
Lord Cavan. While at table Tone was recognized by
an old school friend, and was at once arrested and
sent prisoner to Dublin. A court martial followed,
and despite his own plea to be regarded as a French

366

'NINETY-EIGHT.

officer, and therefore, if condemned shot, he was
sentenced to bp hung. In despair he tried to kill
himself in prison, but the wound though fatal, was
not immediately so, and the sentence would have
been carried rigorously out but for the intervention
of Curran, who moved for a writ of Habeas Corpus
on the plea that as the courts of law were then sitting
in Dublin, a court martial had no jurisdiction. The
plea was a mere technicality, but it produced the re-
quired delay, and Wolfe Tone died quietly in prison.

LIV.

THE UNION.

BY the month of August the last sparks of the
rebellion of '98 had been quenched. Martial law
prevailed everywhere. The terror which the rising
had awakened was finding its vent in violent actions
and still more violent language, and Lord Cornwallis,
the Lord-Lieutenant, was one of the few who ven-
tured to say that enough blood had been shed, and
that the hour for mercy had struck. The ferocity
with which the end of the contest had been waged
by the rebels had aroused a feeling of corresponding,
or more than corresponding ferocity on the other
side. That men who a few months before had trembled
to see all whom they loved best exposed to the
savagery of such a mob as had set fire to the barn at
Scullaboge, or murdered the prisoners at Rossbridge,
should have been filled with a fury which carried
them far beyond the necessities of the case is hardly
perhaps surprising, but the result was to hurry them
in many instances into cruelties fully as great as those
which they intended to avenge.

It was at this moment, while the country was still
racked and bleeding at every pore from the effects of

368 THE UNION.

the recent struggle, that Pitt resolved to carry out
his long projected plan of a legislative Union. Public
opinion in Ireland may be said for the moment to
have been dead. The mass of the people were lying
crushed and exhausted by their own violence. Fresh
from a contest waged with gun and pike and torch,
a mere constitutional struggle had probably little or
no interest for them. The popular enthusiasm which
the earlier triumphs of the Irish Parliament had
awakened had all but utterly died away in a fratri-
cidal struggle. To the leaders of the late rebellion
it was an object of open contempt, if not indeed ot
actual aversion. Wolfe Tone, the ablest man by far
ort the revolutionary side, had never wearied of pour-
ing contempt upon it. In his eyes it was the great
opponent of progress, the venal slave which had not
only destroyed the chances of a successful outbreak,
and whose endeavour had been to keep Ireland under
the heel of her tyrant. To him the opposition as
little deserved the name of patriot as the veriest
place-men. Grattan, throughout his long and noble
career had been as steadily loyal, and as steadily
averse to any appeal to force as any paid creature
of the Government. To men who only wanted to
break loose from England altogether, to found an
Irish republic as closely as possible upon the model
then offered for their imitation in France, anything
like mere constitutional opposition seemed not con-
temptible merely, but ridiculous. •

This explains how it was that no great burst of
public feeling — such as a few years before would have
made the project of a Union all but impossible —

370 THE UNION.

was now to be feared. Pitt had for a long time
firmly fixed his mind upon it as the object to be
attained. He honestly believed the existing state
of things to be fraught with peril for England,
and to have in it formidable elements of latent
danger, which a war or any other sudden emergency
might bring to the front. He knew too, undoubtedly,
that no opportunity equally favourable for carrying
his point was ever likely to recur again.

He accordingly now proceeded to take his measures
for securing it with the utmost care, and the most
anxious selection of agents. Two opposite sets of in-
ducements were to be brought to bear upon the two
contending factions. To the Protestants, fresh from
their terrible struggle, the thought of a closer union
with England seemed to promise greater protection
in case of any similar outbreak. Irish churchmen
too had been always haunted with a dread sooner or
later of the disestablishment of their Church, and a
union, it was argued, with a country where Protestants
constituted the vast majority of the population, would
render that peril for ever impossible, and it was
agreed that a special clause to that effect should
be incorporated in the Act of Union. To the
Roman Catholics a totally different set of induce-
ments were brought forward. The great bait was
Emancipation, which they were privately assured
would never be carried as long as the Irish Parliament
existed, but might safely be conceded once it had
ceased to exist. No actual pledge was made to that
effect, but there was unquestionably an understanding,
and Lord Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, was untiring

THE UNION POSTPONED. 371

in his efforts to lull them into security upon this
point.

So much discrepancy of statement still prevails upon
the whole subject that it is extremely difficult to
ascertain what really was the prevailing ssntiment in
- Ireland at this time for and against the project of a
Union. In Ulster the proposal seems certainly to
have been all but unanimously condemned, and in
Dublin, too, the opposition to it was vehement and
unhesitating, but in other parts of the country it
seems to have met with some support, especially
in Gal way and Tipperary. In January, 1799, Par-
liament met, and the proposal was brought forward in
a speech from the throne, but encountered a violent
opposition from all the remaining members of the
patriotic party. Grattan, who had returned to Parlia-
ment for the express purpose, eloquently defended the
rights of the Irish legislature, and was supported by
Sir John Parnell, by Plunkett, and by all the more
prominent members of the opposition. After a
debate which lasted nearly twenty-two hours, a
division was called, and the numbers were found to
be equal ; another fierce struggle, and this -time the
Government were beaten by five ; thus the proposal
for the time was lost.

Not for long though. Pitt had thoroughly made
up his mind, and was bent on carrying his point to a
successful issue. Most of those v/hohad voted against
the Union were dismissed from office, and after the
prorogation of Parliament, the Government set to
work with a determination to secure a majority before
the next session. There was only one means of

372 THE UNION.

effecting this, and that means was now employed.
Eighty- five boroughs — all of which were in the hands
of private owners — would lose their members if a
Union were passed, and all these, accordingly, it was
resolved to compensate, and no less than a million
and a quarter of money was actually advanced for
that purpose, while for owners less easily reached by
this means peerages, baronetcies; steps in the peerage,
and similar inducements, were understood to be
forthcoming as an equivalent.

It is precisely at this point that controversy grows
hottest, and where it becomes hardest, therefore, to
see a clear way between contending statements,
which seem to meet and thrust one another, as it
were at the very sword's point. That the sale of
parliamentary seats — so shocking to our reformed
eyes — was not regarded in the same light at the date
of the Irish Union is certain, and in questions of ethics
contemporary judgment is the first and most impor-
tant point to be considered. The sale of a borough
carried with it no more necessary reprobation then
than did the sale of a man, say, in Jamaica or Virginia.
Boroughs were bought and sold in open market>
and many of them had a recognized price, so much
for the current session, so much more if in perpetuity.
We must try clearly ' to realize this, in order to
approach the matter fairly, and, as far as possible,
to put the ugly word " bribery " out of our thoughts,
at all events not allow it to carry them beyond the
actual facts of the case. Pitt, there is no question,
had resolved to carry his point, but we have no right
to assume that he wished to carry it by corrupt

A MATTER FOR CONTROVERSY. 373

means, and the fact that those who opposed it were
to be indemnified for their seats no less than those
who promoted it, makes so far strongly in his favour.

On the other hand, the impression which any given
transaction leaves upon the generation which has
actually witnessed it is rarely entirely wrong, and that
the impression produced by the carrying of the Irish
Union — almost equally upon its friends and its foes
— was, to put it mildly, unfavourable, few will be dis-
posed to deny. Over and above this general testi-
mony, we have the actual letters of those who were
mainly instrumental in carrying it into effect, and it
is difficult to read those of Lord Cornwallis without
perceiving that he at least regarded the task as a
repellent one, and one which as an honourable man
he would gladly have evaded had evasion been pos-
sible. It is true that Lord Castlereagh, who was
associated intimately with him in the enterprise,
shows no such reluctance, but then the relative cha-
racters of the two men prevent that circumstance from
having quite as much weight as it otherwise might.

The fact is that the whole affair is still enveloped
in such a hedge of cross-statement and controversy,
that in spite of having been eighty-seven years before
the world, it still needs careful elucidation, and the
last word upon it has certainly not yet been written.
To attempt anything of the sort here would be
absurd, so we must be content with simply following
the actual course of events.

The whole of that memorable summer was spent
carrying out the orders of the Prime Minister. The
Lord- Lieu tenant and the Chief Secretary travelled in

MARQUIS CORNWALLIS.
(Engraved by James Stow from an original drawing by S. D. Koster.}

THE UNION CARRIED. 375

person round Ireland to assist in the canvass, and
before the Parliament met again the following January,
they were able to report that they had succeeded.
Grattan had been suffering from a severe illness, and
was still almost too ill to appear. He came, however,
and his wonted eloquence rose to the occasion. He
appealed in the most moving and passionate terms
against the destruction of the Parliament Even then
there were some who hoped against hope that it might
be saved. At the division, however, the Government
majority was found to be overwhelming, only a
hundred members voting against it. The assent of
the Upper House had already been secured, and
was known all along to be a mere formality. And
so the Union was carried.

How far it was or was not desirable at the time ;
how far it was or was not indispensable to the safety
of both countries ; to what extent Pitt and in a less
degree those who acted under him were or were not
blameworthy in the matter — are points which may be
almost indefinitely discussed. They were not as
blameworthy as they are often assumed to have
been, but it is difficult honestly, to see how we are to
exonerate them from blame altogether. The theory
that the end justifies the means has never been a
favourite with honourable men, and some at least
of the means by which the Union of Great Britain
and Ireland was carried would have left fatal stains
upon the noblest cause that ever yet inspired the breast
of man. Early in the last century Ireland through her
Parliament had herself proposed a legislative union,
and England had rejected her appeal. Had it been

376

THE VNION.

accomplished then, or had it been brought about in
the same fashion as that which produced the Union
between Scotland and England, it might have been
accepted as a boon instead of a curse, and in any case
could have left no such bitter and rankling memories
behind it. It is quite possible, and perfectly logical,
for a man to hold that a Union between the two
countries was and is to the advantage of both, and yet
to desire that when it did come about it had been
accomplished in almost any other conceivable way.

CRYPT OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL,

LV.

O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

ANOTHER century had now dawned, and, like the
last, it was heralded in with great changes in Ireland.
More than change, however, is needed for improve-
ment. " Plus go. change plus ctst la meme chose " has
been said of French politics, and is at least equally
applicable to Irish ones. The Union had not brought
union, and the years which followed it were certainly
no great improvement on those that had preceded
them. The growth of political institution is not so
naturally stable in Ireland that the lopping down of
one such institution tended to make the rest stronger
or more healthy. It was a tree that had undoubtedly
serious flaws,, and whose growing had not been as
perfect as it might have been, but it had admittedly
borne some good fruit, and might have borne better
had it been left alone. Anyhow it was gone, and the
history of the next twenty-nine years is a confused
and distracting medley of petty outbreaks — that in
1803 of which Robert Emmett was the leader being
the most important — and of recurrent acts of repres-
sion, out of the monotonous welter of which one great

ROBERT EMMET.

(From a stipple engraving by J. Heath.}

THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION. 379

figure presently rises like a colossus, till it comes to
dominate the whole scene.

At a meeting of Catholic citizens in Dublin in 1800
to protest against the Union, Daniel O'Connell, then a
young barrister of twenty-six, made his first public
speech, and from that time forward his place as a
leader may be said to have been fixed. A Catholic
Association had some years earlier been formed, and
of this he soon became the chief figure, and his efforts
were continually directed towards the relief of his co-
religionists. In 1815 a proposal had been made by
the Government that Catholic Emancipation should
be granted, coupled with a power of veto in the
appointment of Catholic bishops, and to this com-
promise a considerable Catholic party was favourable.
Richard Lalor Sheil — next to O'Connell by far the
ablest and most eloquent advocate for Emancipation
— supported it ; even the Pope, Pius VI I., declared that
he felt " no hesitation in conceding it." O'Connell,
however, opposed it vehemently, and so worked up
public opinion against it that in the end he carried
his point, and it was agreed that no proposal should
be accepted which permitted any external interference
with the Catholic Church of Ireland. This was his
first decisive triumph.

O'Connell's buoyancy and indomitable energy im-
parted much of its own impulse to a party more
dead and dispirited than we who have only known it
in its resuscitated and decidedly dominant state can
easily conceive. In 1823 a new Irish Catholic As-
sociation was set on foot, of which he was the visible
life and soul. It is curious to note how little enthu-

380 O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

siasm its proceedings seem at first to have awakened,
especially amongst the priesthood. At a meeting on
February 4, 1824, the necessary quorum of ten
members running short, it was only supplied by
O'Connell rushing downstairs to the book-shop over
which the association met, and actually forcing up-
stairs two priests whom he accidently found there,
and it was by the aid of these unwilling coadjutors
that the famous motion for establishing the "Catholic
rent" was carried. No sooner was this fund established,
however, than it was largely subscribed for all over the
country, and in a wonderfully short time the whole
priesthood of Ireland were actively engaged in its
service. The sums collected were to be spent in
parliamentary expenses, in the defence of Catholics,
and in the cost of meetings. In 1825 the association
was suppressed by Act of Parliament, but was hardly
dead before O'Connell set about the formation of
another, and the defeat of the Beresfords at the
election for Waterford in 1826 was one of the first
symptoms which showed where the rising tide was
mounting to.

It was followed two years later by a much more
important victory. Although Catholics were ex-
cluded from sitting in Parliament the law which forbade
their doing so did not preclude their being returned
as members, and it had long been thought that policy
required the election of some Catholic, if only that the
whole anomaly of the situation might be brought
into the full light of day. An opportunity soon
occurred. Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare,
having accepted office as President of the Board of

THE CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 381

Trade, he was obliged to appeal to his constituents
for re-election, and O'Connell caught at the sugges-
tion made to him of contesting the seat. His pur-
pose had hardly been announced before it created the
wildest excitement all over Ireland. The Catholic
Association at once granted £5,000 towards the
expenses, and £9,000 more was easily raised within a
week. In every parish in Clare the priests addressed
their parishioners from the altar, appealing to them
to be true to the representative of their faith. After
a vehement contest, victory declared itself unhesi-
tatingly for O'Connell, who was found to have
polled more than a thousand votes over his an-
tagonist.

The months which followed were months of the
wildest and most feverish excitement all over Ireland.
O'Connell, though he used his " frank," did not
present himself at the House of Commons. He
devoted his whole time to organizing his co-religion-
ists, who by this time may be said to have formed one
vast army under his direction. In every parish the
priests were his lieutenants. Monster meetings were
held in all directions, and it may without exaggera-
tion be said that hardly a Catholic man escaped the
contagion. So universal a demonstration was felt to
be irresistible. A sudden perception of the necessity
for full and unqualified Emancipation sprang up in
England. Even the Duke of Wellington bent his
head before the storm. In the king's speech of
February, 1829, a revision of the Catholic disa-
bilities was advised. The following month the
Catholic- Relief Bill was carried through the House

382 O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

of Commons by a majority of 180, and received the
royal assent on the I3th of April.

Thus the victory was won, and won too without a
single shackling condition. It was won, moreover, by
the efforts of a single individual, almost without sup-
port, nay, in several cases against the active opposi-
tion of some who had hitherto been its warmest advo-
cates, a fact for which O'Connell's own violence was
undoubtedly largely responsible. This seems to be
the place to attempt an analysis of this extraordinary
man, setting down the good and the evil each in
their due proportion. The task, however, would in
truth be impossible. For good or ill his figure
is too massive, and would escape our half inch of
canvas were we to try and set it there. The best
description of him compressible in a few words is
Balzac's — " He was the incarnation of an entire
people." Nothing can be truer. Not only was he
Irish of the Irish, but Celt of the Celts, every quality,
every characteristic, good, bad, loveable, or the reverse
which belongs to the type being found in him, only
on an immense scale. To the average Irishman
of his day he stands as Mont Blanc might stand
were it set down amongst the Magillicuddy Reeks.
He towers, that is to say, above his contemporaries not
by inches, but by the head and shoulders. His aims,
hopes, enthusiasms were theirs, but the effective, con-
trolling power was his alone. He had a great cause,
and he availed himself greatly of it, and to this and
to the magnetic and all but magical influence of his
personality, that extraordinary influence which he for
so many years wielded is no doubt due.

DANIEL O'CONNELL, Af.P.

(From a pen-and-ink sketch by Doyle, in the Department of Prints
and Drawings, British Museum. )

384 O' CON NELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

Two points must be here set down, since both are
of great importance to the future of Ireland, and for
both O'Connell is clearly responsible — whether we
regard them as amongst his merits or the reverse.
He first, and as it has been proved permanently,
brought the priest into politics, with the unavoidable
result of accentuating the religious side of the con-
test and bringing it into a focus. The bitterness
which three generations of the penal code had en-
gendered only, in fact, broke out then. The hour
of comparative freedom is often — certainly not alone
in Ireland — the hour when the sense of past oppres-
sion first reveals itself in all its intensity, and that
biting consciousness of being under a social ban which
grew up in the last century is hardly even yet extinct
there, and certainly was not extinct in O'Connell's
time. Another, and an equally important effect, is
also due to him. He effectually, and as it has proved
finally, snapped that tie of feudal feeling which,
if weakened, still undoubtedly existed, and which
was felt towards the landlord of English extraction
little less than towards the few remaining Celtic ones.
The failings of the upper classes of Ireland of his day,
and long before his day, there is no need to extenuate,
but it must not in fairness be forgotten that what
seems to our soberer judgment the worst of those
failings — their insane extravagance, their exalted
often ludicrously inflated notions of their own relative
importance; their indifference to, sometimes open hos-
tility to, the law — all were bonds of union and sources
of pride to their dependants rather than the other
way. It needed a yet stronger impulse — that of

THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 385

religious enthusiasm — to break so deeply rooted and
inherent a sentiment. When that spark was kindled
every other fell away before it.

As regards England, unfortunately, the concession
of Emancipation was spoilt not merely by the sense
that it was granted to force rather than to conviction,
but even more to the intense bitterness and dislike with
which it was regarded by a large proportion of Eng-
lish Protestants. A new religious life and a new
sense of religious responsibility was making itself
widely felt there. The eighteenth century, with its
easy-going indifferentism, had passed away, and one
of the effects of this new revival was unhappily to
reawaken in many conscientious breasts much of the
old and half-extinct horror of Popery, a horror which
found its voice in a language of intolerance and
bigotry which at the present time seems scarcely con-
ceivable.

The years which followed were chiefly marked by
a succession of efforts upon O'Connell's part to procure
Repeal. An association which had been formed by
him for this purpose was put down by the Government
in 1830, but the next year it was reformed under a new
name, and at the general election in 1831 forty mem-
bers were returned pledged to support Repeal. The
condition of Ireland was meanwhile miserable in the
extreme. A furious tithe-war was raging, and many
outrages had been committed, especially against tithe
proctors, the class of men who were engaged in col-
lecting the tax. Ribbon associations and other secret
societies too had been spreading rapidly underground.
Of such societies O'Connell was through life the im-

386 O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

placable enemy. The events of 1798 and 1803 had
left an indelible impression on his mind. The "United
Irishmen," in his own words, " taught me that all
work for Ireland must be done openly and above
board." The end of the tithe struggle, however, was
happily approaching. In 1838 an Irish Tithes Com-
mutation Act was at last carried, and a land tax in
the form of a permanent rent charge substituted.

Repeal was now more than ever the question of the
hour, and to Repeal henceforward O'Connell devoted
his entire energies. In 1840 the Loyal National
Repeal Association was founded, and a permanent
place of meeting known as Conciliation Hall estab-
lished for it in Dublin. 1841, O'Connell had early
announced, would be known henceforward as the ye"ar
of Repeal, and accordingly he that year left Eng-
land and went to Ireland, and devoted himself there
to the work of organization. A succession of monster
meetings were held all over ths country, the far-famed
one on Tara Hill being, as is credibly asserted, at-
tended by no less than a quarter of a million of people.
Over this vast multitude gathered together around
him the magic tones of the great orator's voice swept
triumphantly ; awakening anger, grief, passion, delight,
laughter, tears, at its own pleasure. They were
astonishing triumphs, but they were dearly bought.
The position was, in fact, an impossible one to
maintain long. O'Connell had carried the whole
mass of the people with him up to the very brink of
the precipice, but how to bring them safely and suc-
cessfully down again was more than even he could
accomplish. Resistance he had always steadily

IMPRISONMENT OF O'CONNELL. 387

denounced, yet every day his own words seemed to be
bringing the inevitable moment of collision nearer and
nearer. The crisis came on October the 5th. A
meeting had been summoned to meet at Clontarf,
near Dublin, and on the afternoon of the 4th the
Government suddenly came to the resolution of issu-
ing a proclamation forbidding it to assemble. The
risk was a formidable one for responsible men to run.
Many of the people were already on their way, and
only O'Connell's own rapid and vigorous measures in
sending out in all directions to intercept them
hindered the actual shedding of blood.

His prosecution and that of some of his principal
adherents was the next important event. By a Dub-
lin jury he was found guilty, sentenced to two years
imprisonment, and conveyed to prison, still earnestly
entreating the people to remain quiet, an order which
they strictly obeyed. The jury by which he had
been condemned was known to be strongly biassed
against him, and an appeal had been forwarded against
his sentence to the House of Lords. So strong there,
too, was the feeling against O'Connell, that little ex-
pectation was entertained of its being favourably
received. Greatly to its honour, however, the sen-
tence was reversed and he was set free. His im-
prisonment had been of the lightest and least onerous
description conceivable; indeed was ironically described
by Mitchell shortly afterwards as that of a man —
"addressed by bishops, complimented by Americans,
bored by deputations, serenaded by bands, comforted
by ladies, half smothered by roses, half drowned in
champagne." The enthusiasm shown at his release

388 O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

was frantic and delirious. None the less those months
in Richmond prison proved the death-knell of his
power. He was an old man by this time ; he was
already weakened in health, and. that buoyancy which
had hitherto carried him over any and every obstacle
never again revived. The "Young Ireland" party,
the members of which had in the first instance been
his allies and lieutenants, had now formed a distinct
section, and upon the vital question of resistance were
in fierce hostility to all his most cherished principles.
The state of the country, too, preyed visibly upon his
mind. By 1846 had begun that succession of disas-
trous seasons which, by destroying the feeble barrier
which stood between the peasant and a cruel death,
brought about a national tragedy, the most terrible
perhaps with which modern Europe has been con-
fronted. This tragedy, though he did not live to see
the whole of it, O'Connell — himself the incarnation of
the people — felt acutely. Deep despondency took hold
of him. He retired, to a great degree, from public life,
leaving the conduct of his organization in the hands
of others. Few more tragic positions have been de-
scribed or can be conceived than that of this old man
— so loved, so hated, so reverenced, so detested — who
had been so audaciously, triumphantly successful
in his day, and round whom the shadows of night
were now gathering so blackly and so swiftly. Des-
pair was tightening its grip round the hearts of all
Irishmen, and it found its strongest hold upon the
heart of the greatest Irishman of his age. Nothing
speaks more eloquently of the total change of situa-
tion than the pity and respectful consideration ex-

DEATH OF O'CONNELL. 389

tended at this time to O'Connell by men who only
recently hid exhausted every possibility of vitupera-
tion in abuse of the burly demagogue. In 1847 he
resolved to leave Ireland, and to end his days in
Rome. His last public appearance was in the House
of Commons, where an attentive and deeply re-
spectful audience hung upon the faultering and barely
articulate accents which fell from his lips. In a
few deeply moving words he appealed for aid and
sympathy for his suffering countrymen, and left
the House ; within a few months he had died at
Genoa. Such a bare summary leaves necessarily
whole regions of the subject unexplored, but, let the
final verdict of history on O'Connell be what it may,
that he loved his country passionately, and with an
absolute disinterestedness no pen has ever been found
to question, nor can we doubt that whatever else may
have hastened his end it was the Famine killed him,
almost as surely as it did the meanest of its victims.

LVI.

"YOUNG IRELAND."

THE camp and council chamber of the "Young
Ireland " party was the editor's room of The Nation
newspaper. There it found its inspiration, and there
its plans were matured — so far, that is, as they can
be said to have been ever matured. For an emi-
nently readable and all things considered a wonder-
fully impartial account of this movement, the reader
cannot do better than consult Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's
" Four Years of Irish History," which has the immense
advantage of being history taken at first hand, written
that is by one who himself took a prominent part in
the scenes which he describes.

The most interesting figure in the party had, how-
ever, died before those memorable four years began.
Thomas Davis, who was only thirty at the time of his
death in 1845, was a man of large gifts, nay, might
fairly be called a man of genius. His poetry is, perhaps,
too national to be appreciated out of Ireland, yet
two, at least, of his ballads, " Fontenoy " and " The
Sack of Baltimore," may fairly claim to compare with
those of any contemporary poet. His prose writings,
too, have much of the same charm, and, if he had no

SMITH O*BRIEN. 391

time to become a master of any of the subjects of
which he treats, there is something infectious in the
very spontaneousness and, as it were, untaught boyish
energy of his Irish essays.

The whole movement in fact was,- in the first
instance, a literary quite as much as a political one.
Nearly all who took part in it — Gavan Duffy, John
Mitchell, Meagher, Dillon, Davis himself — were very
young men, many fresh from college, all filled with
zeal for the cause of liberty and nationality. The
graver side of the movement only showed itself
when the struggle with O'Connell began. At first no
idea of deposing, or even seriously opposing the great
leader seems to have been intended. The attempt
on O'Connell's part to carry a formal declaration
against the employment under any circumstances
of physical force was the origin of that division, and
what the younger spirits considered " truckling to the
Whigs" helped to widen the breach. When, too,
O'Connell had partially retired into. the background,
his place was filled by his son, John O'Connell, the
" Head conciliator," between whom and the " Young
Irelanders " there waged a fierce war, which in the end
led to the indignant withdrawal of the latter from
the Repeal council.

Before matters reached this point, the younger camp
had been strengthened by the adhesion of Smith
O'Brien, who, though not a man of much intellectual
calibre, carried no little weight in Ireland. His age —
which compared to that of the other members of his
party, was that of a veteran — his rank and position as a
county member, above all, his vaunted descent from

" Y6UNG IRELAND."

Brian Boroimhe, all made him an ally and a convert to
be proud of. Like the rest he had no idea at first of
appealing to physical force, however loudly an abstract
resolution against it might be denounced. Resistance
was to be kept strictly within the constitutional limits,
indeed the very year of his junction with this the
extreme left of the Repeal party, Smith O'Brien's
most violent proceeding was to decline to sit upon
a railway committee to which he had been sum-
moned, an act of contumacy for which he was ordered
by the House of Commons into the custody of the
Sergeant-at-Arms, and committed to an extemporized
prison, by some cruelly declared to be the coal-
hole. " An Irish leader in a coal-hole ! " exclaims
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, indignantly, can more
unworthy statement be conceived ? " Regullus in a
barrel, however," he adds, rather grandly, " was not
quite the last one heard of Rome and its affairs ! "

In Ireland matters were certainly sad enough and
serious enough without any such serio-comic incidents.
Famine was already stalking the country with giant
strides, and no palliative measures as yet proposed
seemed to be of the slightest avail. Early in January,
1847, O'Connell left on that journey of his which
was never completed, and by the middle of May
Ireland was suddenly startled by the news that her
great leader was dead.

The effect of his death was to produce a sudden and
immense reaction. A vast revulsion of love and reve-
rence sprang up all over the country ; an immense
sense of his incomparable services, and with it a
vehement anger against all who had opposed him.

JOHN MITCHELL. 393

Upon the " Young Ireland " party, as was inevitable,
the weight of that anger fell chiefly, and from the
moment of O'Connell's death whatever claim they
had to call themselves a national party vanished
utterly. The men " who killed the Liberator " could
never again hope to carry with them the suffrages of
any number of their countrymen.

This contumely, to a great degree undeserved, natu-
rally reacted upon the subjects of it. The taunt of
treachery and ingratitude flung at them wherever they
went stung and nettled. In the general reaction of
gratitude and affection for O'Connell, his son John
succeeded easily to the position of leader. The older
members of the Repeal Association thereupon rallied
about him, and the split between them and the younger
men grew deeper and wider.

A wild, impracticable visionary now came to play
a part in the movement. A deformed misanthrope,
called James Lalor, endowed with a considerable
command of vague, passionate rhetoric, began to write
incentives to revolt in The Nation, These growing
more and more violent were by the editor at length pru-
dently suppressed. The seed, however, had already sown
itself in another mind. John Mitchell is described by
Mr. Justin McCarthy as " the one formidable man
amongst the rebels of '48 ; the one man who distinctly
knew what he wanted, and was prepared to run any
risk to get it." Even Mitchell, it is clear, would
never have gone as far as he did but for the im-
pulse which he received from the crippled desperado
in the background. Lalor was, in fact, a monomaniac,
but this Mitchell seems to have failed to perceive. To

394 " YOUNG IRELAND."

him it was intolerable that any human being should
be willing to go further and to dare more in the cause
of Ireland than himself, and the result was that after
awhile he broke away from his connection with TJie
Nation, and started a new organ under the name of
The United Irishmen, one definitely pledged from the
first to the policy of action.

From this point matters gathered speedily to a head.
Mitchell's newspaper proceeded to fling out challenge
after challenge to the Government, calling upon the
people to gather and to "sweep this island clear of the
English name and nation." For some months these
challenges remained unanswered. It was now, how-
ever, " '48," and nearly all Europe was in revolution.
The necessity of taking some step began to be evident,
and a Bill making all written incitement of insur-
rection felony was hurried through the House of
Commons, and almost immediately after Mitchell
was arrested.

Even then he seems to have believed that the
country would rise to liberate him. The country,
however, showed no disposition to do anything of the
sort He was tried in Dublin, found guilty, sentenced
to fourteen years' transportation, and a few days
afterwards put on board a vessel in the harbour and
conveyed to Spike Island, whence he was sent to
Bermuda, and the following April in a convict vessel
to the Cape, and finally to Tasmania.

The other "Young Irelanders," stung apparently
by their own previous inaction, thereupon rushed
frantically into rebellion. The leaders — Smith
O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others — went about

ARREST OF THE LEADERS. 395

the country holding reviews of " Confederates," as
they now called themselves, a proceeding which
caused the Government to suspend the Habeas Corpus
Act, and to issue a warrant for their arrest. A few
more gatherings took place in different parts of the
country, a few more ineffectual attempts were made
to induce the people to rise, one very small collision
with the police occurred, and then the whole thing,
was over. All the leaders in the course of a few days
were arrested and Smith O'Brien and Meagher were
sentenced to death, a sentence which was speedily
changed into transportation. Gavan Duffy was
arrested and several times tried, but the jury always
disagreed, and in the end his prosecution was aban-
doned. The " Young Ireland " movement, however,
was dead, and never again revived.

LVII.

THE FAMINE.

ALL the time the earlier of the foregoing scenes were
being enacted, the famine had been drawing its python
grasp tighter and tighter around the unhappy island.
The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed
themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year
there was much suffering, though a trifle to what
was to follow. Many remedies were tried, both to
stop the blight and save the crops, but all alike proved
unavailing. The next year the potatoes seemed to
promise unusually well, and the people, with charac-
teristic hopefulness, believed that their trouble was
over. The summer, however, was very warm and wet,
and with August there came on a peculiarly dense
white fog, which was believed by all who were in
Ireland at the time to have carried the blight with it
in its folds. Whether this was the case or not, there
is no doubt that in a single fatal night nearly the
whole potato crop over the entire country blackened,
and perished utterly. Then, indeed, followed despair.
Stupor and a sort of moody indifference succeeded
to the former buoyancy and hopefulness. There
was nothing to do ; no other food was attainable.

GALWAY AND MAYO. 397

The fatal dependence upon a single precarious crop
had left the whole mass of the people helpless before
the enemy.

Soon the first signs of famine began to appear.
People were to be seen wandering about ; seeking for
stray turnips, for watercresses, for anything that would
allay the pangs of hunger. The workhouses, detested
though they were, were crammed until they could
hold no single additional inmate. Whole families
perished ; men, women, and children lay down in their
cabins and died, often without a sign. Others fell by
the roadside on their way to look for work or seek
relief. Only last summer, at Ballinahinch in Conne-
mara, the present writer was told by an old man that
he remembered being sent by his master on a message
to Clifden, the nearest town, and seeing the people
crawling along the road, and that, returning the same
way a few hours later, many of the same people were
lying dead under the walls or upon the grass at the
roadside. That this is no fancy picture is clear from
local statistics. No part of Ireland suffered worse
than Galway and Mayo, both far more densely popu-
lated then than at present. In this very region of
Connemara an inspector has left on record, having to
give orders for the burying of over a hundred and
thirty bodies found along the roads within his own
district.

Mr. W. E. Forster, who, above all other Englishmen^
deserved the gratitude of Ireland for his efforts during
this tragic time, has left terrible descriptions of the
scenes of which he was himself an eye-witness, espe-
cially in the west. " The town of Westport," he tells

398 THE FAMINE.

us in one of his reports, " was itself a strange and
fearful sight, like what we read of in beleaguered
cities ; its streets crowded with gaunt wanderers,
sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-
struck look — a mob of starved, almost naked women
around the poor-house clamouring for soup-tickets-'
Our inn, the head-quarters of the road engineer and
pay clerks, beset by a crowd of beggars for work."
In another place " the survivors," he says, " were
like walking skeletons — the men gaunt and haggard,
stamped with the livid mark of hunger ; the children
crying with pain ; the women in some of the cabins
too weak to stand. When there before I had seen
cows at almost every cabin, and there were besides
many sheep and pigs owned in the. village. But now
the sheep were all gone — all the cows, all the
poultry killed — only one pig left ; the very dogs
which had barked at me before had disappeared — no
potatoes ; no oats."

One more extract more piteous even than the rest :
"As we went along our wonder was not that the
people died, but that they lived ;.and I have no
doubt whatever that in any other country the mortality
would have been far greater ; that many lives have
been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long appren-
ticeship to want in which the Irish peasant had been
trained, and by that lovely touching charity which
prompts him to share his scanty meal with his
starving neighbour."

Of course all this time there was no lack of
preventative measures. Large sums had been voted
from the Treasury; stores of Indian corn introduced ;

EFFORTS OF THE GOVERNMENT. 399

great relief works set on foot. An unfortunate
fatality seemed, however, to clog nearly all these
efforts. Either they proved too late to save life,
or in some way or other to be unsuitable to
the exigencies of the case. Individual charity, too,
came out upon the most magnificent scale. All
Europe contributed, and English gold was poured
forth without stint or stay. Still the famine raged
almost unchecked. The relief works established by
the Government, with the best intentions possible,
too often were devoted to the most curiously useless,
sometimes even to actually harmful, objects. To
this day " Famine roads " may be met with in the
middle of snipe bogs, or skirting precipices where
no road was ever wanted or could possibly be
used. By the time, too, they were in full working
order the people were, in many cases, too enfeebled
by want and disease to work. For close upon the
heels of the famine followed an epidemic hardly less
fatal than itself. In the course of the two years
that it raged over two hundred thousand people
are said to have perished from this cause alone, and
three times the number to have been attacked and
permanently enfeebled by it.

In 1849 a Relief Act was passed which established
soup kitchens throughout the unions, where food
was to be had gratis by all who required it. Long
before this similar kitchens had been privately set
on foot, and men and women had devoted them-
selves to the work with untiring energy and the
most absolute self-devotedness. Of these self-ap-
pointed and unpaid workers a large number shared

400 THE FAMINE.

the fate of those whom they assisted. Indeed, it is
one of the most singular features of the time that
not only old, or feeble, or specially sensitive people
died, but strong men, heads of houses — not regarded
as by any means specially soft-hearted — raised, too,
by circumstances out of reach of actual hunger, died
—just as O'Connell had died — of sheer distress of
mind, and the effort to cope with what was beyond
the power of any human being to cope with. In the
single county of Galway the records of the times
show — as may easily be verified — an extraordinary
number of deaths of this type, a fact which alone
goes far to disprove those accusations of heartlessness
and indifference which have in some instances been
too lightly flung.

After the famine followed ruin — a ruin which swept
high and low alike into its net. When the poor rate
rose to twenty and twenty-five shillings in the pound
it followed that the distinction between rich and
poor vanished, and there were plenty of instances
of men, accounted well off, who had subscribed
liberally to others at the beginning of the famine,
who were themselves seeking relief before the
end. The result was a state of things which has left
bitterer traces behind it than even the famine itself.
The smaller type of landowners, who for the most
part had kindly relations with their tenants, were
swept away like leaves before the great storm, their
properties fell to their creditors, and were sold by
order of the newly established Encumbered Estates
Courts. No proposing purchaser would have any-
thing to say to estates covered with a crowd of

WHOLESALE EMIGRATION. 40!

pauper tenants, and the result was a wholesale
clearance, carried out usually by orders given by
strangers at a distance, and executed too often with
a disregard of humanity that it is frightful to read
or to think of. Most of the people thus ejected in
the end emigrated, and that emigration was under
the circumstances their best hope few can reasonably
doubt. Even here, however, misfortune pursued
them. Sanitary inspection of emigrant ships was at
the time all but unheard of, and statistics show that
the densely crowded condition of the vessels which
took them away produced the most terrible mortality
amongst the already enfeebled people who crowded
them, a full fifth of the steerage passengers in many
cases, it is said, dying upon the voyage, and many
more immediately after landing. The result of
all this has been that the inevitable horrors of the
time have been deepened and intensified by a sense
of ill-usage, which has left a terrible legacy behind
— one which may prove to be a peril to genera-
tions still unborn. Even where those who emigrated
have prospered most, and where they or their sons
are now rich men, they cling with unhappy per-
sistency to the memory of that wretched past — a
memory which the forty years which have intervened,
far from softening, seem, in many cases, to have only
lashed into a yet more passionate bitterness.

In Ireland itself the permanent effects of the disaster
differed of course in different places and with different
people, but in one respect it may be said to have
been the same everywhere. Between the Ireland of
the past and the Ireland of the present the Famine

402 THE FAMINE.

lies like a black stream, all but entirely blotting out
and effacing the past. Whole phases of life, whole
types of character, whole modes of existence and
ways of thought passed away then and have never
been renewed. The entire fabric of the country
was torn to pieces and has never reformed itself upon
the- same lines again. After a while every- day
life began again of course, as it does everywhere
all over the world, and in some respects the struggle
for existence has never since been quite so severe
or so prolonged. The lesson of those two terrible
years has certainly not been lost, but like all such
lessons it has left deep scars which can never be
healed. Men and women, still alive who remember
the famine, look back across it as we all look back
across some personal grief, some catastrophe which
has shattered our lives and made havoc of every-
thing we cared for. We, too, go on again after a
while as if nothing had happened, yet we know
perfectly well all the while that matters are not the
least as they were before ; that on the contrary they
never can or will be.

LVIII.

THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

THE story of the last forty years must be com-
pressed into a nutshell. The famine was over at
last, but its effects remained. Nearly a million of
people had emigrated, yet the condition of life for
those remaining was far from satisfactory. The
Encumbered Estates Act, which had completed the
ruin of many of the older proprietors, pressed, in some
respects, even more severely upon the tenants, a
large number of whom found themselves confronted
with new purchasers, who, having invested in Irish
land merely as a speculation, had little other interest
in it. In 1850 an attempt at a union of North and
South was made, and a Tenant League Conference
assembled in Dublin. Of this league the remnants of
the "Young Ireland" party formed the nucleus, but
were supplemented by others with widely different
aims and intentions. Of these others the two Sadleirs,
John and James, Mr. Edmund O'Flaherty, and Mr.
William Keogh, afterwards Judge Keogh, were the
most prominent. These with their adherents con-
stituted the once famous " Brass Band " which for
several years filled Parliament with its noisy decla-

404 THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

mations, and which posed as the specially appointed
champion of Catholicism. In 1853 several of its
members took office under Lord Aberdeen, but their
course was not a long one. A bank kept in Ireland
by the two Sadleirs broke, ruining an enormous
number of people, and on investigation was found
. to have been fraudulently conducted from the very
beginning. John Sadleir thereupon killed himself;
his brother James was expelled from the House of
Commons, and he and several others implicated in
the swindle fled the country and never reappeared,
and so the " Brass Band " broke up, amid the well-
deserved contempt of men of every shade of political
opinion.

After this succeeded a prolonged lull. Secret
agitations, however, were still working underground,
and as early as 1850 one known as the Phoenix
organization began to collect recruits, although for
a long time its proceedings attracted little or no
attention.

In 1859 several of its members were arrested, and
it seemed then to die down and disappear, but some
years later it sprang up again with a new name, and
the years 1866 and 1867 were signalized by the
Fenian rising, or to put it with less dignity, the
Fenian scare. With the close of the American
War a steady backward stream of Americanized
Irishmen had set in, and a belief that war between
England and America was rapidly approaching
had become an article of fervent faith with a large
majority in Ireland. The Fenian plan of operation
was a two-headed one. There was to be a rising; in

THE FENIANS. 40$

Ireland, and there was to be a raid into Canada
across the American frontier. Little formidable as
either project seems now, at the time they looked
serious enough, and had the strained relations then
existing between England and America turned out
differently, no one can say but what they might have
become so. The Fenian organization, which grew
out of the earlier Phcenix one, was managed from
centres, a man called Stephens being the person
who came most prominently before the world in the
capacity of Head centre. In 1865 Stephens was
arrested in Dublin, but managed to escape not long
afterwards from Richmond prison by the aid of two
confederates within its walls. The following May,
1866, a small body of Fenians crossed the Niagara
river, but the United States authorities rigidly en-
forced the neutrality of the American frontier, and so
the attempt perished. The same spring a rising
broke out in Ireland, but it also was stamped with
failure from its onset, and the famous snowstorm
of that year finished the discomfiture of its ad-
herents.

Two other Fenian demonstrations, not to mention
an abortive project to seize Chester Castle, were
shortly afterwards made in England. In 1867, some
Fenian prisoners were rescued in Manchester, while on
their way to gaol, and in the attempt to burst the
lock of the van in which they were being conveyed
a police officer named Brett, who was in charge of it,
was accidentally shot. Five men were found guilty
for this offence. One Macquire was proved to have,
been arrested by mistake, another Conder had the

406 THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

sentence commuted, but three — Allen, Larkin, and
O'Brien — were hung.

Another Fenian exploit of a somewhat different
character followed in December, 1867, when an
attempt was made by some desperados belonging
to the party to blow up the Clerkenwell House of
Detention, in which two Fenian prisoners were then
confined. Luckily for them, as it turned out, they
were not in that part of the prison at the time, or
the result of their would-be liberators' efforts would
have simply been to kill them. As it was, twelve
other people were either killed on the spot or died
from its effects, and over a hundred were more or
less badly wounded. For this crime six persons were
put upon their trial, but only one was convicted and
actually executed.

The next Irish event of any moment stands upon
a curiously different platform, though there were not
wanting suggestions that the two had an indirect con-
nection as cause and effect. In 1868 the Liberal party
came into power after the General Election with Mr.
Gladstone as Prime Minister, and the session of 1869
saw the introduction of a Bill for the Disestablishment
of the Irish Church. The controversies to which that
measure gave rise are already quite out of date, and
there is no need therefore to revive them. Few
measures so vehemently opposed have produced less
startling effects in the end. It neither achieved those
great things hoped by its supporters, nor yet brought
about the dire disasters so freely threatened by
its opponents. To the Roman Catholics of Ireland
the grievance of an alien State Church had, since the

DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE IRISH CHURCH. 407

settlement of the tithe question, lapsed into being
little more than a sentimental one, so that practically
the measure affected them little. As an institution;
however, the .position of the Irish State Church
was undoubtedly a difficult one to defend, the very
same arguments which tell most forcibly for the
State Church of England tellings most forcibly
against its numerically feeble Irish sister. What-
ever the abstract rights or wrongs of the case it is
pretty clear now that the change must have come
sooner or later, and few therefore can seriously regret
that it came when it did. The struggle was pro-
tracted through the entire session, but in the end
passed both Houses of Parliament, and received the
royal assent on July 26, 1869.

It was followed early the following year by the
Irish Land Act, which was introduced into the House
of Commons by Mr. Gladstone on February 15, 1870.
This Act has been succinctly described as one
obliging all landlords to do what the best landlords
did spontaneously, and this perhaps may be accepted
as a fairly accurate account of it. Owing to the fact
of land being practically the only commodity of
value, there has always been in Ireland a tendency to
offer far more for it than could reasonably be hoped
to be got in the form of return, and this tendency has
led, especially in the poorest districts and with the
smallest holdings, to a rent being offered and ac-
cepted often quite out of proportion to the actual
value of the land, though in few instances do the
very highest rents attainable seem even in these cases
to have been exacted. The Act now proposed was

408 THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

to abolish one passed in 1860 which had reduced all
tenant and landlord transactions in Ireland to simple
matters of free contract, and to interpose the authority
of the State between the two. It legalized what were
known as the " Ulster customs ; " awarded compen-
sations for all improvements made by the tenant or
his predecessors, and in case of eviction for any cause
except non-payment of rent a further compensation was
to be granted, which might amount to a sum equal to
seven years' rent ; it also endeavoured to a partial
extent to establish peasant proprietorship. That it
was a conscientious attempt to deal with a very
intricate and perplexing problem may fairly be con-
ceded, at the same time it has been its misfortune
that it proved satisfactory to neither of the two classes
chiefly concerned, being denounced by the one as the
beginning of spoliation, by the other as a mere worth-
less, and utterly contemptible attempt at dealing with
the necessities of the case.

A third measure — the Irish Education Act — was
proposed the following session, but as it resulted in
failure, was popular with no party, and failed to pass ;
it need not be entered into even briefly. 1874 saw a
dissolution of Parliament and a General Election,
which resulted in the defeat of the Liberals, and the
return of the Conservatives to office. Before this, a
new Irish constitutional party pledged to the principle
of Home Government, had grown up in the House
of Commons, at first under the leadership of Mr.
Butt, afterwards with new aims and widely different
tactics under that of Mr. ParnelL In 1879 an
agrarian movement was set on foot in Ireland, chiefly

THE LAND LEAGUE. 409

through the instrumentality of Mr. Davitt, which has
since become so widely known as the Land League.
It was almost immediately joined by the more ex-
treme members of the Irish Parliamentary party.
Meetings were held in all directions, and an amount
of popular enthusiasm aroused which the more
purely political question had never succeeded in
awakening. Subscriptions poured in from America.
A season of great scarcity, and in some districts of
partial famine, had produced an unusual amount of
distress, and this and the unsettled state of the Land
Question all helped to foster the rising excitement.
The country grew more and more disturbed. Several
murders and a number of agrarian outrages were
committed, and the necessity of strengthening the
hands of the executive began to be felt by both the
chief political parties alike.

In 1880 the Liberal party returned to power after
the General Election, and 1881 witnessed the passage
through Parliament of two important Irish measures.
The first of these was a Protection of Life and Pro-
perty Bill brought in in January by Mr. Forster, then
Chief Secretary of Ireland. As was to be expected,
this was vehemently opposed by the Nationalist mem-
bers, who retarded it by every means in their power,
one famous sitting of the House on this occasion lasting
for forty-two hours, from five o'clock on the Monday
afternoon to nine o'clock on the Wednesday following,
and then only being brought to an end by the authority
of the Speaker. By March, however, the Bill passed,
and in the following month, April /th, a new Irish
Land Act was brought forward by Mr. Gladstone, and

410 THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

was passed after much opposition the following
autumn.

The full scope and purport of this Act it is far
beyond the limits of these few remaining pages to enter
upon. Although, to some extent an outcome of
the Act of 1870, it cannot in strictness be called
a mere development or completion of it, being in
many respects based upon entirely new principles.
The most salient of these are what are known as
the " three Fs," namely — Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rent,
to be decided by a Land Court, and Free Sale.
As regards the last two, it has been pointed out
with some force that the one practically does
away with the other, the only person benefited
being the immediate occupier, at whose departure
that fierce competitive desire for the land which is
the real root of the whole difficulty being allowed
freer play than ever. With regard to the first, its
effect may be briefly stated as that of reducing the
owner to the position of a rent charger or annuitant
upon what had before been his own estate, thereby
depriving him — even where want of means did not
effectually do so — of all desire to expend capital upon
what had henceforth ceased to be his property, and
over the management of which he had almost wholly
lost control. That this is a change of a very large
and sweeping character it is needless to say. Hence-
forward ownership of land in Ireland is no longer
ownership in the ordinary sense of the word. It is an
ownership of two persons instead of one, and a divided
ownership, even where two people work together
harmoniously, is as most of us are aware, a very

THE QUESTION OF EVICTION. 413

had he to a great degree planned the murder and
helped to draw the others into it, but had actually
selected the very weapon by which it was accom-
plished, so that of all the miscreants engaged in the
perpetration he was perhaps the deepest dyed and
the most guilty.

Since then, and indeed all along, the struggle in
Ireland itself has been almost wholly an agrarian one.
The love of and desire for the land, rather than
for any particular political development, is what
there dominates the situation. A heavy fall of
prices has led to a widespread refusal to pay rent,
save at a considerable abatement upon the already
reduced Government valuations. Where this has
been refused a deadlock has set in, rents in
many cases have not been paid at all, and eviction
has in consequence been resorted to. Eviction,
whether carried out in West Ireland or East London,
is a very ugly necessity, and one, too, that is in-
delibly stamped with a taint of inhumanity. At
the last extremity, it is, however, the only one
open to any owner, qua owner, let his political sym-
pathies or proclivities be what they may, so that it
does not necessarily argue any double portion of
original sin even on the part of that well-laden pack-
horse of politics — the Irish landlord — to say that
his wits have not so far been equal to the task of
dispensing with it.

Within the last two years only one question has
risen to the surface of politics which gravely affects
the destinies of Ireland, but that one is of so vast
and all-important a character that it cannot be

414 THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

evaded. The question I mean, of course, of Home
Rule. Complicated as its issues are, embittered as
the controversy it has awakened, dark still as are
its destinies, its history as a piece of projected,
and so far unsuccessful, legislation has at least the
merit of being short and easily stated. In the month
of December, 1885, just after the close of the general
election, it began to be rumoured as forming part of
the coming programme of the Liberal leader. On
April 8, 1886, a Bill embodying it was brought
forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone ;
upon June /th, it was rejected upon the second
reading by a majority of thirty, and at the general
election which followed was condemned by a large
majority of the constituencies.

And afterwards ? What follows ? What is its
future" destined to be? Will it vanish away, will it
pass into new phases, or will some form of it even-
tually receive the sanction of the nation ? These are
Sphinx questions, which one may be excused from
endeavouring to answer, seeing that the strongest
and most far-reaching heads are at this moment
intent upon them — not, so far as can be seen, with
any strikingly successful result. The Future is a deep
mine, and we have not yet struck even a spade into it

In every controversy, no matter how fierce the
waves, how thick the air with contending assertions,
there is almost always, however, some fact, or some
few facts, which seem to rise like rocks out of the
turmoil, and obstinately refuse to be washed or
whittled away. The chief of these, in this case, is
the geographical position, or rather juxtaposition, of

HOME RULE. 415

the two islands. Set before a stranger to the whole
Irish problem — if so favoured an individual exists
upon the habitable globe — a map of the British
islands, and ask him whether it seems to him inevit-
able that they should remain for ever united, and we
can scarcely doubt that his reply would be in the
affirmative. This being so, we have at least it will
be said one fact, one sea-rock high above the reach
of waves or spray. But Irishmen have been declared
by a great and certainly not an unfavourable critic —
Mr. Matthew Arnold — to be " eternal rebels against
the despotism of fact." If this is so — and who upon
the Irish side of the channel can wholly and abso-
lutely deny the assertion ? — then our one poor standing-
point is plucked from under our feet, and we are all
abroad upon the waves again. Will Home Rule or
would Home Rule, it has been asked, recognize this
fact as one of the immutable ones, or would it sooner
or later incline to think that with a little determina-
tion, a little manipulation, the so-called fact would
politely cease to be a fact at all ? It is difficult to
say, and until an answer is definitely received it does
not perhaps argue any specially sloth-like clinging to
the known in preference to the unknown to admit
that there is for ordinary minds some slight craning
at the fence, some not altogether unnatural alarm as
to the ground that is to be found on the other side
of it. " Well, how do you feel about Home Rule
now that it seems to be really coming ? " some one
inquired last spring, of an humble but life-long
Nationalist. " 'Deed, sir, to tell the truth, I feel as if
I'd been calling for the moon all me life and was told

416 THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.

it was coming down this evening into me back gar-
den ! " was the answer. It is not until a great change
is actually on top of us, till the gulf yawns big and
black under our very eyes, that we fully realize what
it means or what it may come to mean. The old state
of things, we then begin to say to ourselves, was really
very inconvenient, very trying to all our tempers and
patience, but at least we know the worst of it. Of
the untravelled future we know nothing. It fronts
us, with hands folded, smiling blankly. It may
be a great deal better than we expect, but, on the
other hand, it may be worse, and in ways, too, which
as yet we hardly foresee. Whatever else Home Rule
may, would, could, or should be, one thing friends
and foes alike may agree to admit, and that is
that it will mark an ' entirely new departure— a de-
parture so new that no illustration drawn from the
last century, or from any other historical period, is of
much avail in enabling us to picture it to ourselves.
It will be no resumption, no mere continuation of
anything that has gone before, but a perfectly fresh
beginning. A beginning, it may be asked, of what?

LIX.

CONCLUSION.

"CONCLUDED not completed," is the verdict of
Carlyle upon one of his earlier studies, and "con-
cluded not completed," conscience is certainly apt to
mutter at the close of so necessarily inadequate a
summary as this. Much of this inadequacy, it may
fairly be confessed, is individual, yet a certain amount
is also inherent in the very nature of the task itself.
In no respect does this inadequacy press with a more
penitential weight than in the case of those heroes
whose names spring up at intervals along our pages,
but which are hardly named before the grim neces-
sities of the case force us onwards, and the hero and
his doings are left behind.

Irish heroes, for one reason or another, have come
off, it must be owned, but poorly before the bar of
history. Either their deeds having been told by
those in whose eyes they found a meagre kind-
ness, or else by others who, with the best intentions
possible, have so inflated the hero's bulk, so pared
away his merely human frailties, that little reality
remains, and his bare name is as much as even
a well-informed reader pretends to be acquainted

418 CONCLUSION.

with. Comparing them with what are certainly their
nearest parallels — the heroes and semi-heroes of Scotch
history — the contrast strikes one in an instant, yet
there is no reason in the nature of things that this
should be. Putting aside those whose names have
got somewhat obscured by the mists of the past, and
putting aside those nearer to us who stand upon what
is still regarded as debateable ground, there are no
lack of Irish names which should be as familiar to the
ear as those of any Bruce or Douglas of them all.
The names of Tyrone, of James Fitzmaurice, of
Owen Roe O'Neill, and of Sarsfield. to take only a
few arid almost at random, are all those of gallant
men, struggling against dire odds, in causes which,
whether they happen to fit in with our particular sym-
pathies or not, were to them objects of the purest, most
genuine enthusiasm. Yet which of these, with the
doubtful exception of the last, can be said to have
yet received anything like a fair meed of apprecia-
tion ? To live again in the memory of those who
come after them may not be — let us sincerely hope
that it is not — essential to the happiness of those who
are gone, but it is at least a tribute which the living
ought to be called upon to pay, and to pay moreover
ungrudgingly as they hope to have it paid to them
in their turn.

Glancing with this thought in our minds along that
lengthened chronicle here so hastily over-run, many
names and many strangely-chequered destinies rise up
one by one before us ; come as it were to judgment, to
where we, sitting in state as " Prince Posterity,"
survey the varied field, and judge them as in our

CONCLUSION.

419

wisdom we think fit, assigning to this one praise, to
that one blame, to another a judicious admixture of
praise and blame combined. Not, however, it is to
be hoped, forgetting that our place in the same
panorama waits for another audience, and that the
turn of this generation has still to come.

AUTHORITIES.

Adamnan, " Life of St. Columba " (trans.}.

Arnold (Matthew), " On the Study of Celtic Literature."

Bagwell, " Ireland under the Tudors."

Barrington (Sir Jonah), " Personal Recollections," " Rise and

Fall of the Irish Nation."

Brewer, " Introduction to the Carew Calendar of State Papers."
Bright (Rt. Hon. J.), " Speeches."
Burke (Edmund), "Tracts on the Popery Laws," "Speeches

and Letters."

Carlyle, " Letters and Speeches of Cromwell."

Carew, " Pacata Hibernia."

Cloncurry, " Life and Times of Lord Cloncurry."

Clogy, " Life and Times of Bishop Bedell."

Cornwallis Correspondence.

Croker (Rt. Hon. W.), " Irish, Past and Present."

Davis (Thomas), " Literary and Historical Essays."

Davies (Sir John), "A Discoverie of the True Causes why

Ireland was never Subdued."
Dennis, " Industrial Ireland."
Domenach (Abbe), " Larerte Erinn."
Dymock (John), "A Treatise on Ireland."
Duffy (Sir Charles Gavin), " Four Years of Irish History."

Essex, " Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of."

422 AUTHORITIES.

Froude (J. A.), " History of England," " The English in
Ireland."

Giraldus Cambrensis, " Conquest of Ireland," Edited by J.
Dimock, Master of the Rolls Series, 1867 ; "Topography
of Ireland," Edited by J. Dimock, Master of the Rolls
Series, 1867.

Green, " History of the English People."

Grattan, " Life and Speeches of Rt. Hon. Henry Grattan."

Halliday, " Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin."
Hennessy (Sir Pope), " Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland."
Hardiman, " History of Galway."
Howth (Book of), from O'Flaherty's " lar Connaught."

Joyce, " Celtic Romances."

Kildare (Marquis of), " The Earls of Kildare.1

Lodge, " Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica."

Lecky, " History of England in the Eighteenth Century,"

and " Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland."
Leland, " History of Ireland."

Maine (Sir H.), " Early History of Institutions," " Village

Communities, East and West."
Max Miiller's Lectures.
M'Gee (T. Darcy), " History of Ireland."
McGeoghegan, " History of Ireland."
Mitchell (John), " History of Ireland."
Montalembert, " Monks of the West."
Murphy (Rev. Denis), " Cromwell in Ireland."
Madden, " History of Irish Periodical Literature."
McCarthy (Justin), " History of Our Own Times."

O'Connor (T. P.), " The Parnell Movement."
O'Flaherty, " lar Connaught."

Petty (Sir W.), " Political Anatomy of Ireland."
Petrie (Dr.), " Round Towers of Ireland."

AUTHORITIES. 423

Prendergast, "Tory War in Ulster," "The Cromwellian Settle-
ments."

Richey (A. G.), " Lectures on the History of Ireland."

Smith (Goldwin), " Irish History and Irish Character."
Spenser (Edmund), "View of the State of Ireland."
Stokes (Miss), "Early Christian Architecture of Ireland."
Stokes (Professor George), " Ireland and the Celtic Church."

Tone (Wolfe), " Autobiography."*

Vere de (Aubrey)., " Queen Meave and other Legends of the
Heroic Age," and " Legends of St. Patrick."

Walpole, " Kingdom of Ireland."
Webb (Alfred), "Compendium of Irish Biography."
Wilde (Sir W.), " Lough Corrib," and " The Boyne and the
Blackwater."

Young (Arthur), " Tour in Ireland."

INDEX.

Abercromby, Sir Ralph, 359

Act of Supremacy, 152

Act of Uniformity, 278

Adamnan, 43

Adare, 188

Affane, battle. of, 183

Aidan (Saint) and Irish monk, 45

Alcansar, battle of, 184

Allen, an Irish priest, 184

Allen, hill of, 14

Allen, John, Archbishop of Dub-
lin, 146

Allen, the Fenian prisoner, 406

Andrews, Dean of Limerick, 237

Angareta, mother of Giraldus, 78

Angelsea, settlement of, 67

Anglo-Norman invasion, 76

Annals of Lough Ce, 109

Anselm (Saint), Archbishop of
Canterbury, 81

Arctic hare, the, 4

Ard-Reagh, or Over-king, 91

Ardscul, battle of, 108

Arklow Head, 93

Armagh, Book of, 33

Armagh, cathedral of, burnt by
Thorgist, 55

Armdu, a Viking, 68

Arran, isles of, 38

Art McMurrough, or Art Kava-
nagh, 119; master of Leinster,
119; has recourse to Black-
rent, 123 ; entertained by
Richard II., 120 ; knighted,
1 20 ; thrown into prison, 120 ;

. released, 120; he hastens to
Meath, 1 21 ; defeats the royal
army, 121 ; he again meets
Richard II. in battle, 121 ;
victorious, 123

Ascendency, the Protestant, 307

Ashton, Sir Arthur, a royalist
officer, 261

Askeaton, castle of, 187 ; de-
stroyed, 1 88

Association, Loyal National Re-
peal, 386

Attainder, Bill of, drawn and
passed, 287

Athenry, battle of, no; en-
feebled state, 175

Athlone, fortress of, 104, 292

Athy, bridge of, 128

Aughrim, battle of, 293

Augustine (Saint), 44

D'Aguilar, Don Juan, 215

D'Avaux, Count, envoy to
James II., 283

B

Baculum Cristatum, or Staff of

St. Patrick, 158
Baggotrath, battle of, 260
Bagnall, Sir Henry, 198 ; Tyrone
marries his sister, 201 ; becomes
his enemy, 201 ; he marches
against Tyrone, 204 ; he is shot,
205 ; his army defeated, 205 ;
fort of Blackwater surrendered,
205

426

INDEX.

Ballinasloe, town of, 293
Baltimore, stronghold of pirates,

127

Baltinglass, Lord, 189
Bannockburn, battle of, 108 5 its

effects on Ireland, 108
Bannow, bayof, or "FitzStephen's

stride," 83

Barnabie FitzPatrick, 157
Barries descendants of Nesta, 76
Barri, Robert de, 83
Barrington's Bridge, 107
Barrymore, Lord, 141
Beare O'Sullivan, 215
Bedell, bishop of Kilmore, 245
Beltane, Celtic festival of 1st May,

M

Belgic, colony of, 6
Bellingham, Sir Edward, 162
Belrath, castle of, 141
Ben Edar, now Howth, 17
Benignus, first disciple of St.

Patrick, 35

Benturb, battle of, 255
Bermingham, Sir John de, victor

of Athenry, no, in
Beresford, Chief Commissioner of

Customs, 351

Bernard, Saint, of Clairvaux, 81
Betas, Celtic houses of hospitality,

14

Black-rent, use of, 119, 123, 129
Black water river, 183 ; battle of,

203
Blaney, Mr., member for Mona-

ghan, 243

Book of Aicill, Aryan law, 25
Book of Armagh, 33
Book of Howth, the, 140
Borough, Lord, deputy, 203
Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh,

3°4, 320

Boyle, primate, 280
Boyne, battle of the, 288
Bramhall, primate, 277
" Brass Band," 403
Brehons, judges or law makers,

19, 25
Brian Boru, or Bornma, 60, 61 ;

he defeats the Danes, 61 ; seizes

throne of Cashel, 63 ; over-runs
Leinster, 63 ; subdues Ossory,
63 ; attacks Meath, 63 ; burns
the stronghold of Tara, 63 ;
becomes Ard-Reagh in Mala-
chy's place, 63 ; he is called
Brian of the Tribute, 64 ; he
becomes master of Ireland, 64 ;
his victory at Clontarf, 66 ; he
marches against Brodar, 68, 69 ;
is killed, 69 ; mourned and
buried, 69, 70.
Bridget (Saint), 47 ; sacred fire of,

47

Brodar, a Viking, 66 ; killed Brian,
67

Brown, Archbishop of Meath, 159;
deprived, 161

Bruce, Edward, in Ireland, 107 ;
battle of Bannockburn, 108 ; its
effects, 1 08 ; Bruce lands at
Carrickfergus, 108 ; defeats
Richard de Burgh, 108 ; defeats
Sir Edmund Butler at Ardscul,
108 ; victorious at Kells, 108 ;
meets his brother, 108 ; is
crowned king, 109 ; devastates
the country, 109 ; defeated and
killed at Dunkalk, 1 10

Bruce, King Robert of Scotland,
108

Burr en, district of the, in North
Clare, 269

Burgh, Sir William FitzAldelm de,
103

Burgundy, Duchess of, 132, 136

Burke, Edmund, 330

Burke, Mr. Thomas, murder of,
411

C

Calvagh O'Donnell, 167

Camden, Lord (Lord-Lieutenant),
359.

Campion, historian, the, 125

Carew, Sir George, 213, 215, 2l6>
226

Carew, Sir Peter, 178 ; his atroci-
ties, 178

Carey, James, the informer, 412

Carhampton, Lord, 358

INDEX.

427

Carle Canuteson, 67

Carlow, 154

Carneg, rock of, 84

Carnot, 355

Catholic Confederacy, 249

Catholic Relief Bill carried, 381

Cashel, Synod of, 92

Castlehaven, 215

Castlereagh, Lord, Chief Secre-
tary, 370

Caulfield, Lord, Governor of
Charlemont, 243

Cavan, Lord, 365

Cavendish, Lord Frederick,
murdered, 411

Cerd or Nuad of "the Silver
hand," 9

Charlemont, Lord, 330

Charles I., accession, 231 ; he
sends Strafiord to Ireland, 231,
235> 238 ; his death, 279

Chester Castle, attack on, pro-
jected, 405

Chesterfield, Lord, Lord-Lieu-
tenant, 344

Claims, Court of, 275

Clan Nairn, 17

Clann Dichin, a malediction, 20

Clanricarde, Earl of, 105

Clarence, Lionel, Duke of, 114

Cliach, plains of, 14

Clocthech, round towers of, 56

Clogher, Bishop of, 241

Clonard, town of, 47

Clonmacnois, high altar at, 47

Clonmel, 262

Clontarf, battle of, 71, 74 ; strand
of, 66

Clyn, Franciscan historian, 109

Cole, Dean of St. Paul's, story of,
163

Cole, Sir William, Governor of
Enniskillen, 243

Coleraine, 243

Colkilla, hill of, 14

Colman, Bishop, 46

Columba (Saint), born, 43 ; his
character, 42, 43 ; he leaves
Ireland, 43 ; visits Scotland,
43 ; and lona, 44

Connaught, landowner's case of,
230

Connaught, treaty of, 103

Connemara, anciently lar Con-
naught, 8

Conciliation Hall, 386

Confederates, Young Irelanders,

395

Con O'Neill (Earl of Tyrone) 154
Cong, plains of, 7
Conyers, Clifford, Sir, Governor of

Connaught, 209
Cooke, Under- Secretary of State,

35»

Coote, Sir Charles, 244, 246, 273

Cork, town of, 119

Cormac, Mac Art, 23

Cormac O'Conn, King, II

Cornwallis, Marquis, Lord-Lieu-
tenant, 365

Corrib Lough, 104

Cowper, Lord, 411

" Coyne and livery," 183

Croagh Patrick, mountain of, 34

Crofty, hill of, 247

Crom a Boo, war cry of the Fitz-
geralds, 138

Cromwell, Henry, Lord-Lieu-
tenant, 76

Cromwell in Ireland, 261 ; he
takes Drogheda, 261 ; Wex-
ford,2&2 ; Kilkenny,262 ; Clon-
mel, 262 ; his army sickens,
263 ; Ireland under his rule,
264 ; the struggle continues,
264 ; Limerick and Galway
yield at last, 264 ; close of civil
war, 265 ; his methods, 266 ;
Catholic evictions, 267 ; his
treatment of Sir Phelim O'Neill,
Lord Mayo, and Lord Mus-
kerry, 267 ; his death, 272

Crint, or stringed harp, 52

Cruachan, mountain of, 35

Curragh of Kildare, 14

D

Danaans, tribe of, 8
Danes, 53
Danes, Dublin, 67

428

INDEX.

Danes of Limerick, 58-61

Dangen, ancient name of Phillips-
town, 162

Dashda, or Druid chieftain, 53

Davis, John, Sir, 95-117; he is
elected Speaker, 227 ; quarrel
which followed, 227, 228

Davis, Thomas (poet), 290

Davitt, Michael, Mr., 409

Declaration ot Rights by Grattan,
320

Declaratory, Act of George I.,
322

"Defenders," Association of, 345

Delvin, Lord, 191

Dermot McMurrough, King of
Leinster, 83

Derry, town of, 171

Desmond, Earl of, taken to Lon-
don, 176 ; vacillates about re-
belling, 185 ; his death, 192

Desmond-Sugane or Straw, Earl
of, 200

Dillon, Mr., 391

Donald, Chief of Ossory, 90

Donegal, chapels in, 43

Donore, hill of, 280

Douchad, son of O'Brien, 74,

Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh,

159

Downpatrick, town of, 99
Drapier Papers by Swift, 317
Drogheda, Parliament of, 138
Drogheda, taken by Cromwell, 261
Dublin Castle, 240 ; plot to seize

it, 241 ; frustrated, 242
Dublin, Philosophical Association

of, 311

Dublin, Society of, 311
Duffy, Sir Charles Gavin, 390
Dundalk, battle of, 1 10
Dungannon, Matthew, Baron of,

165
Dunsany, Lord, 247

E

Edgecombe, Sir Edward, 135
Edward, I., 107

Edward II., 108 ; Battle of Ban-
nockburn, 108

Edward III., 113; he summons
landowners, 114; appoints
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, vice-
roy, 1 14 ; Statute of Kilkenny is
passed, 115

Elizabeth, Queen, 165 ; entertains
Shane O'Neill at Court, 68;
account of his visit, 168; Ireland
during her reign, 171-172
Emmett, Robert, 376
Emmett, Thomas Addis, 354
Encumbered Estate Court, 400
Enniskillen, town of, 247
Eochaidh king, tale of, 35
Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of,
206 ; take the command in
Ireland, 208 ; proceeds against
Tyrone-, 208 ; his disasters, 208 ;
takes Cahir Castle, 208 ; meets
Lugane Earl, 208 ; meets Ty-
rone at Lagan, 209 ; returns to
England, 210

Eva, daughter of Dermot, 86
Everard, Sir John, 227, 228

Falkland, Lord, 231

Famine, the first symptoms of,
396 ; great distress, 397 ; Mr.
Forster reports, 397 ; Reliei Act
passed, 399 ; the ruin which
followed it, 400 ; after effects,

403

Fedlim O'Connor, king of Con-
naught, 1 08

Fenian prisoners, rescue of, at
Manchester, 405

Fenian rising, 401

Fenni or Fenians, II

Fercal, tribes of, 161

Ferns, town of, 83

Finn, McCumal, 14

Finn or Fingal, father of Ossian,
II

Finnvarragh, king of the fairies,

21

Firbolgs, race of, 6
Fitton, Sir Edward, 176
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 354-359
Fitzgerald, Maurice, 83

INDEX.

429

Fitzgerald, Mr., member for

Clare, 380
Fitzgerald, Raymond (le Gros),

85

Fitzgerald, Sir James, 191

Fitzgerald, Sir John, 191

FitzHenry, Robert and Meiler,
sons of Nesta, 76

Fitzmaurice, Lady, 188

Fitzmaurice of Lexnaw, 1 1 1

Fitzmaurice, Sir James, 1 78 ;
breaks into rebellion, 178 ; re-
lations between him and Sir
James Perrot, 179; burns Kil-
mallock 179; marches into
Ulster, 179 ; burns Athlone,
179 ; joins the Mac-an-Earlas,
180 ; lays Galway waste, 180 ;
crosses the Shannon, 180 ; sur-
renders and takes the required
oaths at Kilmallock, 180 ; sails
to France, 180; returns, 184;
his death, 187

FitzSimons, Walter, Archbishop
of Dublin, 137

FitzStephen, Robert, 83

FitzUrse of Louth, in

Fitzwilliam, Lord, Lord-Lieu-
tenant, 349-350

Fitzwilliam, Sir William, Lord-
deputy, 199

Flood, Rt. Hon. Henry, 323

Foltbar and Feradach, Legends,
16

Formorians, race of, 5

Forster, Mr. W. E., 397

Forty-shilling Freeholders, Bill of,
349

" Four Masters," the annals of
the, 9

Foyle, Lough, 165

Freeman 's Journal, 322

Fuidhar, or " broken man," 28

G

Gall (Saint), 36

Galway, bay and town of, 104

Galway, Jury of, 247

George, Duke of Clarence, 129

Gerald de Barri, Gerald of Wales,
or Giraldus Cambrensis, 78 ;
grandson of Nesta, 78 ; priest
and chronicler, 78 ; his cha-
racter as a writer, 78

Gerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, son
of Geroit Mor, 130 .

Gerald of Windsor, husband to
Nesta, 76

Geraldines, 101 ; Giraldus' opinion
of them, IOI ; ancestors of Earls
Kildare and Desmond, 102 ;
important position, 102 ; their
keep at Maynooth, 102 ; power
in Ireland, 102 ; Geroit Mor,
or Gerald the Great, 7th Earl
of Kildare, 130

Gilbert, Sir Humphry, 179

Gilla Dacker and his horse,
legend of, 14

Ginkel, Dutch general of Wil-
liam III., 291

Gladstone, Mr. W. E., 406 ; dis-
established the Irish Church,
406 ; introduced Irish Land Act
of 1870, 407; of 1881, 409;
imprisoned members of Land
League, 411 ; proposed measure
of Home Rule of 1886, 414

Glenmama near Dunlaven, 68

Godred, King of Man, 87

Gormanstown, Lord, 249

Granard, Lord Justice, 280

Grattan, Henry, 328 ; his loyalty
and patriotism, 328 ; he enters
Parliament, 330; his eloquence,
330 ; Declaration of Rights,
330 ; retires into private life,
332 ; protests against the Union,
332 ; member of English Par-
liament, 332 ; his death and
burial, 333

" Great Darcy of Flatten," 132

Gregory, Pope, 44

Grey, de Wilton, Lord-deputy,
189

Grey, Leonard, Lord, Deputy,
151. 152

Griffiths, Sir Richard, Irish geo-
logist, 312

430

IXDEX.

H

Habeas Corpus Act, 351
Hadrian IV., Pope, 81
Hamilton, Sir Richard, 282
Harcourt, Lord, 325
Hardi, French General, 365
Harvey, Bagenal, United Irishman

and general of the rebels, 363
Hasculph, Danish Governor, 86-

«7
Hatton, Sir Christopher, "an

Undertaker," 194
Heber and Heremon, sons of

Milesius, 10
Hoadly, Archbishop of Armagh,

320

Hoche, General, 355
Hocht, vessel called the, 365
Home Rule, the question of, 44
Howth, Earl of, 134, 136
Humbert, French general, 364
Hy-Nial, or royal house of O'Neil,

42, 52

lar Connaught, mountains of, 104
Ireland, Primeval, I ; its early
vicissitudes, 3 ; South European
plants in, 5 ; early history of,
5-11 ; its legends, 13-21 ; Celtic
Ireland, 23 ; early laws of, 26-
29 ; St. Patrick's visit to, 32 ;
the Northern scourge of, 50 ;
invasion by Anglo-Normans,
76 ; King John in, 98-100 ;
invasion of, by Edward Bruce,
107 ; Richard II. visits to, 1 19 ;
attempt to force Protestantism
upon, 158-160; Molyneux's,
" The case of," &c., 313 ;
Union of Great Britain and
Ireland, 367-376
Ireland, the future of, 413
" Ireland, Young," party, 390-

.395

Irish Catholic Association, 407
Irish Celts, 25
Irish Church, disestablishment of,

409
Irish Education Act, 408

Irish elk, 4

Irish export of woollen goods for-
bidden, 309
Irish famine, 396-403
Irish hare, 4
Irish heroes, 418
Irish Land Act, 407
Irish volunteers, 336-340
Inchiquin, Lord, 256
lona, 44

James II. recalls Lord Ormond,
280 ; restores Catholics to office,
280 ; his treatment of Protes-
tants, 281-282 ; his flight to
France, 282 ; arrives in Ireland,
283 ; his reception, 284 ; be-
sieges Londonderry, 285 ; goes
to Dublin, 286 ; is defeated at
the battle of the Boyne, 288 ;
his flight, 289

John, the Mad Berserker-warrior,

87

Jones, Michael, Colonel, 259
Jones, Paul, pirate, 326
Joyce's, Mr., " Celtic Romances,"

13

K

Kelts, battle of, 99

Keogh, Judge, 403

Kerry, defence of, 215

Kerry, plants and animals in, 5

Kildare, Dean of, 149

Kildare, house of, 102 ; earls of,
130, 134, 150; "Silken
Thomas," 147 ; vice-deputy,
147 ; renounces allegiance to
England, 147 ; takes Dublin,
148 ; burns Trim and Dunboyne,
149; is defeated, 150; im-
prisoned and hanged, 150

Kilkea, castle of, 144

Kilkenny, castle of, 105

Kilkenny, statutes of, 115

Killala, Bishop of, 365

Kilmallock burnt, 179 : church
of, 179

Kimbaoth, prince of Milesia, IO

INDEX.

431

King's County, 52
Kinsale, harbour of, 215
Knights of Glyn, 102 ; of Kerry,

102

Knockma, a hill of, 8
Knocktow, battle of, 144 ; cause

of, 106

Lacy, Hugo de, viceroy of Henry
II., 92

Lagan, ford of, 209

Lalor, James, 393

Lambay, stand of, 55

Lambert, Simnel, 331 ; received
in Dublin and crowned, 134;
defeated at Stoke, 135 ; taken
prisoner and appointed turn-
spit, 135

Land League, the, 409

Land Lepers, 53, 59

Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 8 1

Langan, Comte de, 288

Laoghaire, King of Mealh, 34

Larkin, Fenian hanged, 406

Lecky's, Mr., "History of the
Eighteenth Century," 300

Lee, Captain, 199

Leix, town of, 161

Leland the historian, 10

Liffy river, 87

Lilibullero, anti-Catholic sonc,
283.

Limerick, articles of, 295

Limerick, first siege of, 291

Limerick, treaty of, 295

Limerick, wood and town of,
117

Lindsfarne, peninsula of, 45

Londonderry, siege of, 285

Lovell, Lord, 135

Lucas, Charles, 323

Luinagh Tyrlough, 195

Lundy, governor of Londonderry,
285

M

Mac-an-Earlas, sons of Clanri-
carde, 191

Macarthy, Colonel, 288

McCarthy, Dermot, 90

Maccumactheneus, St. Patrick's
chronicler, 34

Magan, betrayer of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, 361

Maguire, Lord, 241

Mahon, King of Munster, 6 1

Malachy or Melachin,Ard-Reagh,
52

Maiby, Sir Nicolas, governor of
Connaught, 187

Mananan MacLir, Legend of
Gilla Dacker, 17

Marshall, William, Earl of Pem-
broke, 103

Mary borough anciently Campa, 162

Mary, Queen of England, 163 ;
her death, 164

Maynooth, castle of, 102

Mayo, Lord, 267

Mayo mountains, 8

Maxwell, Colonel, 362

McGeoghan, Abbe, historian, I

McGillapatrick, Lord of Upper
Ossoy, 1 68

McHugh, 191

McMahon, Hugh, chief of Mona-
ghan, 192

McMurrough, Dermot, King of
Leinster, 83, 241

McMurrough, son of Dermot, 83

McToole, Sir Owen, 197

McWilliam, Burke of Galway, 154

McWilliam Eighter, and Mc-
William Oughter, the Nether
and Further Burkes, 1 1 1

McWilliam of Clanricarde, 142

Meagher, 391

Meath, plains of, 8

Mila de Cogan, Norman governor
of Dublin, 87

Milcho chieftain, 3

Milesians or Scoti, 9, 10

Mitchell, John, 391

Molyneux, Thomas, Dr., 311

Molyneux, William, the "In-
genious Molyneux," 311

Montalembert, M. de,4O

Montmorency, Henry de, 85

43'

INDEX.

Mortimer, Roger, viceroy, no

Mountgarrett, Lord, 249

Mountjoy, Charles Blount, 211 ;
his character, 211; establishes
military stations, 213 ; de-
feats by starvation, 213; defeats
Tyrone and the Spanish fleet,
216

Moytura, prehistoric battle of the
southern, 7

Muckern, or Mulkearn noi, 187

Mullingar, town of, 292

Munroe, General, 255

Murhertach, house of, 74

Murphy, Father John, 362

Murphy, Father Michael, 304

N

Nation, The, newspaper, 390
Neil Grey, 167

Newtown Butler, battle of, 288
N orris, General Sir Henry, 206
Norris, Sir Thomas, 194
Norsmen, or Northmen, or Danes,

7, 53-56

Northern Star, newspaper, 358
Nuad, King of the Tuatha-da-

Danaans, 7-9

O

" Oak boys," Society of the, 345

O'Brian, Prince of Thomond, 90

O'Brien, race of, 60

O'Brien, Smith, 391

O'Brien, the Fenian, 406

O' Byrnes, 128

O'Carroll of Argial, 91

O'Connell, Daniel, makes his first
speech, 379 ; his energy, 379 ;
sets on foot the Irish Catholic
Association, 379 ; carries Catho-
lic rent, 380 ; contests the
county of Clare, 381 ; his
character, 382; his efforts to
procure repeal, 385 ; his en-
mity to secret societies, 385 ;
founds the Loyal National
Repeal Association, 386; his

prosecution, 387 ; found guilty

and imprisoned, 387 ; his last

appearance and death, 389
O'Connell, John, 391
O'Connor, Roderick, the Ard-

Reagh, 75, 84-91
O'Connors of Connaught, 74
Octennial Bill, the, 325
O'Curry, 53

O'Dogherty, Sir John, 198
O'Donnel, Calvagh, 167
O'Donnel, of Tyrconnel, 167
O!Donnell, Hugh, or Red Hugh,

200.

O:Donnell, murder of Carey, 412
O'Donnell, Rory, 221
O:Donovans, 63
O'Driscoll's piratical clan of West

Cork, 27
O'Dynor, Dermot, or Dermot oi

the Bright Face, 17
O'Flaherty, Edmund, 403
Oilen-an-Oir, or Gold Island, 185
Ollamhs or Sennachies, . head

bards, 19
O'Lochlin of House of O'Neill,

74

O' Moore, Rory or Roger, 241

O'Neill, Owen, 248

O'Neill, Shane, called the Proud,
165 ; his character, 166 ; his
eloquence, habits, and morals,

166 ; his encounter with Sussex,

167 ; his visit to the English
Court, 1 68 ; receives title of
Captain of Tyrone, 169 ; re-
turns to Ireland, 169; Sussex
attempt to poison him, 169 ;
his descent on the Scots, 170,
and on Connaught, 170 ; his
last disaster and death, 172,

173

O'Neill, Sir Phelim, 241
O'Neills, or Hy-Nials, 60-74
Orange Lodges, institution of, 345
O'Reilly of Brefny, 167
O'Rorke, chieftain of Connaught,

91

O'Rorke of Brefny, chieftain of
Leinster, 91

INDEX.

433

Ormond, house of, 105-128
Ossian, poet and bard, 11-35
Ossory, clan of, 8.|
Oswald, King of Northumbria,

44

Oswin, King of Northumbria, 46

O'Toole, Garrot, 191

O'Toole, St. Lawrence, Arch-
bishop of Dublin, 86

Oulart, hill of, 362

Owel, Lough, near Mullingar,
55

Paladius, missionary, 33

Parnell, Mr., 411

Parnell, Sir John, 371

Parsons, Sir William, 242

Patrick (Saint), his birth, 33 ;
lands in Ireland, 33 ; visits
to Meath and to Connaught,
Antrim, and Armagh, 34 ;
legends of, by Mr. Aubrey de
Vere, 35

" Peep of Day Boys," Society of,

345
Pelham, Sir William, Lord-deputy,

1 88

Penal Code, the, 300
Perkin Warbeck, 136, 137
Perrot, Sir John, 176-179
Peter's Pence, collection of, 79
Petrie, George, LL.D., 7
Petty, Sir William, his survey of

Ireland, 271

Philip II., King of Spain, 183
Phrenix organization, 404
Phoenix Park tragedy, 41 1
Picts, 53

Pierce, Captain, 173
Plunkett, Dr., ' Archbishop of

Dublin, 279
Portland, Duke of, 350
Poynings' Act, 138
Poynings' Act repealed, 287
Poynings, Sir Edward, 148
Preston, Colonel, 249
Protection of Life and Property

Bill, 409

R

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 190-191

Rents, Black, 17, 123

Rents, Fair Rent and Free Sale,
410

Rents, Rack, 28

Rents, Stipulated, 28

Ribbon Association, 385

Richard II. lands at Waterford,
119; his meeting with Art
McMurrough, 119 ; entertains
the chiefs, 120; receives their
oaths of allegiance, 120 ; returns
to Ireland, 122; encounters Art
McMurrough, 122 ; leaves Ire-
land, 123

Rupert, Prince, 259 ; his arrival
at Kinsale, 259

Sadleirs, John and James, 403
Sanim Celtic Festival (November

ist), 14

Sarsfield, Patrick, 280
Saunders, Pope's Legate, 184
Schomberg, Duke of, 288
Schwartz, Martin, Dutch General,

135

Scoti, tribes of the, 9
Scullobogue, barn of, 363
Sebastian, King of Portugal, killed

at the battle of Alcansar, 184
Senchus Mor, ancient law-book,

25, 28

Shannon, Lord, 322
Shannon, river, 91
Shiel, Richard Lalor, 379
Sfdney, Henry, Sir, • 174 ; be-
comes Lord-deputy, 174 ; ap-
points presidents in the pro-
vinces, 176 ; his scheme for
reducing expenses, 177 ; his
visits to Munster and Con-
naught, 179

Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, 66
Silvermine hills of Tipperary, 291
Simon, priest and tutor to Lam-
bert Simnel, 135

434

INDEX.

Sitric, a Viking, 67
Skeffington, Sir William, 148
Slemish mountains, 33
Sligo, town of, 254
Smerwick, town of, 185
Somerset, Edward Earl of Gla-
morgan, 254
South European Plants in Ireland,

5

Southern Moytura, 7
Spanish Armada, 197
Spenser, Edmund, poet, 190
Stanihurst, historian, the, 131
Steel boys, Society of, 345
St. John, Sir Oliver, deputy, 231
St. Leger, Sir Wareham, ' ' Under-
taker," 194

St. Ruth, General, 292
Stephen, Head Fenian centre, 405
Stokes, battle of, 135
Stokes, Miss Margaret, 312
Stone, Archbishop of Armagh,

320

Strafford, Wentworth, in Ireland,
232 ; orders subsidy of^"ioo,oco,
234 ; he overawes the juries,
234 ; his character, 235 ; his
suppression of the woollen trade,
235 ; founds the linen trade, 235 ;
clears the sea of pirates, 235 ;
sets a Court of High Commission
to work, 237 ; his treatment of
Archbishop Ussher, 237 ; his
account of his dealings with
Convocation, 237 ; his return to
England, 239 ; tried for treason,
condemned, and executed, 239 ;
effect of his death in Ireland,

239

Strangford Lough, 33

Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke,
82 ; his marriage with Eva, 86 ;
takes Waterford, 86; is besieged
in Dublin, 87 ; flees to Water-
ford, 88 ; thence to England, 88 ;
meets Henry, 88 ; and returns
to Ireland, 89

Stukeley, Thomas, Sir, 170, 184

Sulcost, battle of, 61

Surrey, Earl of, deputy, 145

Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St.
Patrick's, 315 ; his character,
315; his Drapier Papers, 317;
his attack on Wood's patent,
315 ; his popularity, 319

Swords in Meath, 247

T

Talbot, Richard, Earl of Tyrcon-
nel, 208

Tanist laws of succession, 27

Tara in Meath, 63 ; battle of, 63

Tenant League Confederation, 403

Tenure, Fixity of, 410

Thomond, Lady, 303

Thomond, Lord, 247

Tower, the "Tower Earl" of
Desmond, 192

Townshend, Lord, 325

Towton, battle of, 129

Tuam, Arcnbishop of, 254

Tuatha-da-Danaans, race of, 7

Turgesius or Thorgist, 55

Turlough, grandson of Brian, 82

Tyrconnel, Lady, 289

Tyrconnel, Richard, Earl of, 280

Tyrconnel, Rory O'Donnell, Earl
of, 221

Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of,
199 ; receives his title from
Elizabeth, 199 ; contrasted with
Shane, 199 ; his religious views,

• 200 ; arbitrary arrest of his
brother-in-law, 200 ; marries
Bagnall's sister, 201 ; prepares
for rebellion, 202 ; assumes the
title of the O'Neill, 202 ; is
victorious over Bagnall, 205 ;
meets Essex at Lagan, 209 ;
struggle with Mountjoy, 214;
he hurries south to meet the
Spaniards, 215 ; encounters
Mountjoy and is defeated, 216 ;
reported plot against England,
220 ; flies the country, 221 ; dies
in exile, 222

U

Union, Pitt's plan of, 268
Union, the, 367

INDEX.

435

United Irishmen newspaper, 394
United Irishmen, the Society of,

386
Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh,

163 ; treatment of by Strafford,

237

V

Vere, Aubrey de, Mr. , Legends of

St. Patrick, 35
Vinegar Hill, 363
Volunteers, Irish, the, 334-340

W

Ware Papers, 163

Waterford, town of, 262 ; defence

of, 86 ; Danes of, 85 ; Richard

II. lands at, 122
Wexford, town of, 83 ; castle of,

87 ; siege by Cromwell, 262
Whitby, Synod of, 46
Whiteboys, outrages of, 342-344
Wicklow, landing of St. Patrick

in, 33
William of Orange in Ireland,

288 ; he lands at Carrickfergus,
288 ; meets James's army, is
victorious at the battle of the
Boyne, 289 ; offers free pardon,
290 ; besieges Limerick, 291 ;
his evidence about the treaty of
Limerick, 296

Willoughby, Sir Francis, Governor
of Dublin, 246

Winter, Admiral, 187

Wolfe, Tone, 354 ; leader of
United Irishmen, 354 ; meets
Lord Edward Fitzgerald in
Paris, 355 ; his scheme of de-
scent, 355 ; descent fails, 357 ;
a fresh attempt, 358 ; again
fails, 361 ; is arrested on board
the Hoche, 361 ; condemned
and dies in prison, 366

Wood, patentee of halfpence, 317

Yellow Ford, battle of the, 203
"Young Ireland," party of, 388,
390

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